Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey II: A Complicated Bloodline
by Darkenning
Summary: "Then was Akira the ancestor who was with Negi?" "Complicated." What will happen to Negi now that his destiny has been changed? A sequel, of course. Lemon, Harem, Yuri, other stuff ...
1. Chapter 1

_Prelude_

The party had been winding down for a while now, and Asuna Vesperina Theotanasia Entheofushia was fairly sure that some of the people who had been present for the celebration of her return to the world - or at least, the celebration which had used her return to the world as its ostensible raison d'etre while actually, as some of the celebrants had more or less admitted to her, being held for the sake of celebration - had passed from consciousness in ways completely natural. In fact, some of those who had earlier passed from consciousness in ways other than natural had roused themselves and then returned to sleep, often alongside those who had ended their earlier period of awareness. In the distance, some few were still celebrating, but even so, what she could hear of their charitably-termed discourse suggested that stupor was not far away for them, either.

She felt no urge to sleep herself. Indeed, the memories she had inherited from the girl who was gone reminded her of how so many things had begun simply because that other girl had been unable to sleep owing to her awareness of the great sleep she would embark upon. Though she had none of the desires that had driven that girl - they were truly lost with her, for good or ill - she found that she also wished to hold on to wakefulness for as long as she possibly could.

And so, comforting though it was, Asuna picked up the creature, cat-like in so many ways yet not, she had been sternly informed not long ago, _at all_ a cat, that lay sleeping on her lap, and set it down beside the child-like woman who dozed beside her. She smiled to watch arms come up to wrap around the furry creature, holding it close as the breathing of the two seemed to synchronize. With that, she was free to stand, and walk away from the mock throne which had been bestowed on her at the start of the party, so that she could gaze up at the stars.

There were more of them than she remembered - some fixed, some tilting more swiftly than any planet ever would. She found herself momentarily aching to know the names of these points of light with a hunger that surprised her until she realized how long it had been since she had had to learn _anything_ new, rather than an endless reiteration of facts only slightly changed from the last time she had been compelled to study. She forgave herself the hunger even as she reminded herself that she had time to do that learning.

She had spent quite a bit of that time watching the many lights which gleamed on the surface of the half-occulted moon before she found herself distracted by a familiar sound ... almost achingly familiar, really. So Asuna stopped watching the skies to look down around herself for the source of the scrt-scrting which had drawn her attention. The source of the sound of writing presented itself immediately, not too far from where she stood, and she casually walked among the sleeping forms over to the girl who was no more sleeping than she was, rather bent over a tablet and marking it with a stylus.

Sanjou Kozue heard her approach, and looked up with a smile which would have been perfectly at home on Konoka's face. "My geas," she said by way of explanation. "When fate keeps allowing you to be present for the great events of your epoch, you know that you must chronicle them for future generations. And this is one such event, both for your awakening and for ... well, I won't bore you with the details."

"Thank you," said Asuna. And then, "I think I'm ready, now."

Kozue blinked. "Ready for what?"

"For a long story for another day. It is," she said seriously, "now another day."

She was rewarded by the sight of this seemingly unflappable girl looking nonplussed, before a wry grin took that look's place. "So it is," Kozue admitted. "All right. I'll tell you that tale now. But first a warning. A lot of the pleasure of any story is the questions left unanswered. Most of those questions from the previous story will now be told, and even though there may be new questions raised to replace them, it might ruin your enjoyment of that older tale. Knowing this, decide if you really want to proceed."

"I do," replied Asuna. "I wouldn't have asked -"

"I know, I know. I wasn't just talking to you, though.

"All right. We begin not too long after the last story ended, in a certain dorm room ..."

 **Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey II:  
A Complicated Bloodline**

And then he woke up.

It was a measure of how much he had, despite everything, grown accustomed to the recent changes in his life that Negi did not find himself wondering whether recent events had been simply a dream. Then again, considering the way that he was wrapped up in the sleeping and denuded forms of Akira, Makie and Nodoka, any such imagination would have had the lifespan of the proverbial infernal snowball. Negi himself had reverted to his actual, pre-adolescent (or possibly very _early_ adolescent) persona while sleeping, but that had not stopped them from cozying up to him in what he genuinely hoped had been unconscious instinct.

A vote in favor of such hope passed the polls a moment or so later. After having delicately and deliberately disentangled himself from the sleeping girls without disturbing their dormancy, he saw Makie's sleeping form proceed to sleep-cuddle up to Akira, nuzzling against the swimmer's motherly breasts and unthinkingly wrapping her lips around a nipple. He watched this entire process in silence, feeling a strange mixture of regret and envy as he did, then sighed and crept over to the ladder leading down from his nook.

In the dim light of morning that made its way into the dorm room through its main window, he could see Chisame's ankle and Ayaka's unmistakable hair dangling from the upper bunk bed while Konoka and Setsuna occupied the lower. His breath quickened a little bit at that sight, as a certain absence registered, and he looked about somewhat madly. Despite his wish for silence, he couldn't help but let out a rather noisy sigh of relief as he caught sight of the couch.

And, more particularly, the orange haired girl, hair decs momentarily absent, who was couched out on that couch.

He approached Asuna's somnolent form with what he realized was an attitude bordering on the reverent. Despite everything - which everything had included their immediate reunion, witnessing her reunion with other members of the class, and then some truly ferocious coupling the night before - the fact of her return truly hit him _now_ , and it was hard to hold back the tears he had avoided shedding even when he had despaired about failing her and losing her forever. He loved Akira, just as he had loved Makie, but despite the primacy in his heart that he yearned to give the one just as he had yearned to give it to the other, he knew that on some level he would always be unfaithful to whoever he loved, because -

"I love you," he whispered to Asuna. "I love you, I love you, I love you ..."

"I love you, too," she whispered back, eyes still shut.

Negi flushed. "Ummm," he said softly. "I, I thought you were -"

His lips were stilled as her mismatched eyes opened up and a hand came up to press against them, holding them closed for a moment before sitting up and leaning forward to replace the hand with lips of her own. All without a word more spoken.

He ruined it as she pulled back to gaze at him. "I'll get the pills," he began to say.

She shook her head just once. "I love _you_ ," she said, and the hand that had held his lips moved to hold something else. That said, she kissed him again, this time on his chin, holding him tightly and pulling him onto the couch with her.

Some trace of decency within him still rebelled. "I don't know -" he said as he pressed up against her as she continued to kiss down his throat, his chest, his stomach.

"Love you," she repeated, and took his tiny member into her mouth. He shuddered as he felt a swelling he had both experienced many times before and at the same time never known before.

"Ah," he gasped. "A-A-Asuna ..."

"Yyyyyyyes?" she said from behind his head.

Something seemed odd about that, he decided as arms wrapped around his throat while his head leaned back against the armrest of the couch and something even warmer as Asuna sucked away at him. Something odd about where her voice was coming from.

Oh well.

* * *

It was a measure of how much she had, despite everything, embraced the recent changes in her life - indeed, so enthusiastically that one could only wonder what _despite everything_ might refer to - that Kagarazuka Asuna did not react with surprise when she emerged from the toilet to find Negi Springfield quietly and passionately confessing his love to a copy of her that lay on the couch. Of course, she could not really be surprised by the sight of a copy of herself lying on the couch, since Shiori-san - who, having had Asuna's tongue up her, should probably not be addressed with -san - had been wearing that illusionary disguise when Asuna temporarily departed. Nor was the revelation of the conflicted feelings of her teacher, roommate, partner in battle, little brother-figure and thus notionally-incestuous lover terribly startling.

Painful, slightly, but not startling.

She cared about him in so many ways. And she enjoyed the way that his cock felt inside of her, or even pressed up against her, when he was appropriately grown, perhaps, as she'd said, more than any other that she'd had there. That had been true when she'd said it - oh, was it truly only a day or so past? - and she believed that it was true now. But she was more than a bit curious about some of the other cock she'd seen being used, like that of Yuna's hunky father, or even heard about, like that of (yikes!) the Headmaster.

If she loved him, truly loved him, she wouldn't be so curious, so fickle in her interests. If she loved him, she would be faithful in her heart, even if she was momentarily unfaithful in her body, and she knew that she could not be. She was, after all, a doll, not a real person. Their relationship would always be that of siblings with incest on the table ...

It occurred to her, abruptly, as she watched Shiori-as-Asuna starting to kiss her way down Negi's chest, that that last thought had the character of a quote, even though her conscious mind couldn't place it. Which meant that it had come from her other self, bubbling up into her awareness. And the fact that it did so, _bubbling up_ rather than _breaking through_ into her awareness as her previous moments of heightened knowledge had, was startling. Not since that odd dream right before she had awakened in the future had she clearly heard the voice of that ancient child.

Something had changed in her, and she wondered what it was.

Or would wonder, later.

For now, she joined the lovers on the couch, embracing Negi's neck from behind as she enjoyed the unique pleasure (mixed with a tiny amount of pain, for the spice of it) of watching one who truly loved him without reservations do such things to ease his pain.

* * *

The truth, decided the consummate liar known as Luna, Shiori, Asuna and a few other long-term aliases, as she licked and sucked at a twelve-year old boy's member, was a tricky thing. She supposed that it had to be, given that fate (and also, ah-hah, Fate) had given her a power which enabled her abilities of deception ... so that she could fight for a higher truth, a greater good, of course, or so she had been constantly assured. Clearly, this demonstrated that lies and deception were of equal value when compared to truth in the eyes of whatever ambiguously-existential beings decided such matters, and so she should take no shame in them, either.

Or something.

This was at least how she justified employing one of her alternate identities to seduce Negi Springfield, one of the two people (or, as she'd realized not long ago, one of the two instances of the same person) to whom she was most attracted. (Except for ... well, never mind that.) Other girls - wicked, wicked, treacherous girls - might have been quicker to offer themselves to him once he'd been temporarily aged into young adulthood, but now that that _lie_ had been dispelled, she was the first to offer herself to him in this _true_ self. Admittedly, she was doing so while enmeshed in a lie herself, which might turn the whole thing around from right to wrong once more if it was looked at the right way. Or the wrong way.

Or something.

The presence of the true instance of what she was pretending to be nearby and somewhat more distantly involved - kissing at the ears of Negi-san (whom, having had him inside her, she supposed she should address as Negi-sama) and holding him tightly as though he would flee if she did not - might have dismayed her, but for two things. The first and most important of those two things was that LunaShioriAsunaEtc was almost entirely focused on her immediate goal of pleasuring Negi-san/-sama, and could utterly disregard what was happening around her if it didn't contribute to that goal. And the second of those things ...

Well ... it made the first of those things a lie, actually. But she was sort of used to that.

And anyway, the second of those things was that she was aware that it wasn't even that she was attracted to the same person, separated into two different bodies. She knew that despite their similarities, Negi and Fate were two very different people, with a deep and fundamental commonality. And it was that commonality which attracted her to both of them, and which also attracted her to people like Sakurako, and was now also attracting her to Princess Asuna, as well. This commonality did not speak particularly well of her, but it was the higher truth behind her actions, and it could not be denied.

She was attracted to power.

Or something.

And so, once she had licked and sucked and teased and taunted Negi's negi until it was hard - not as hard as it was when the illusion of adulthood was upon him, but hard nonetheless - EtcAsunaShioriLuna rose up, drew her body along Negi's until their crotches enmeshed and then pulled him up into her, all the while leaning past his head to rain kisses down on the true Asuna's face. Not until those kisses drew a sound of pleasure from the Princess' throat did she begin to rock and roll on Negi.

She might be a lie and a liar, but she would give them the best that she had, nonetheless.

Or something.

* * *

It has been said, and perhaps rightly, that it is exhilarating to quit. To assert, and truly so, that someone else is truly not the boss of oneself is a wonderful thing. The sensation of declaring one's independence, that one is the master of one's fate, the captain of one's soul, and other stirring self-appellations, rather than the veritable slave to one's wage-giver, can be a truly intoxicating feeling. True, this experience is at best momentary, almost invariably followed by concern for one's future welfare, but it is a glorious moment nonetheless. Everyone can understand this.

Everyone can then also imagine how discouraging it is to be told that one cannot quit - or, to be accurate, that the reasons which one gave for ending one's employment are no longer sufficient reason for one's employment to be terminated by one's employer, and so one must remain in the unhappy current situation.

"I hate my life," said Fate Averruncus once more.

Shiina Sakurako, at present engaged in giving said substitute child teacher a foot massage, paused in her efforts and turned to give him a mildly annoyed glance. "Okay, Fate? Comments like that are not really conducive to foot massages."

He let out what even he had to admit was a sigh. "Very well, I will cease to express that opinion." After a moment, he added, "Please continue."

She took that addition as a major victory. Fate could tell that much from the grin on her face that she didn't bother to hide in the moment before she bent to her chosen task once again. He might have kept completely silent if not for that grin. It practically demanded a response.

"However, my current _employment_ situation remains vexing," Fate said after a moment.

Sakurako's practiced foot rub motions didn't even hesitate. "Okay, that's reasonable," she replied without looking up.

He didn't exactly take that as encouragement to continue, as he would have continued regardless of anything less than a full stoppage of the massage. "Even if it is now inconvenient to discharge all the staff members who have experienced intimacies with members of the student population, owing to the likelihood that the school could not continue to function if such a large number of its staff were discharged, one would expect that there would be _some_ effort to sequester staff such as myself from those members of the student population with whom they experienced intimacies."

"Well, from what you told me, you didn't exactly tell the Headmaster whose ashes you hauled," Sakurako noted.

"He could have deduced it was your homeroom," said Fate.

"Could've. Should've. Didn't. Chose not to?" she said with the air of one engaged in speculation. "Anyway, then there's the other thing to take into consideration."

"What other thing?"

She looked over her shoulder with a sly grin. "Nobody else wants to be teaching 3-A, either, ya know? Except Negi-kun."

He let out an annoyed snort. "I suppose not, at that. Well, at least I can take pleasure in one part of this entire mess - he was unconscious and entirely uninvolved with any of that silliness." Fate noticed the momentary pause in Sakurako's efforts, but as she resumed a moment later, he thought nothing of it. "Even if he has unaccountably given up his power - something I cannot even begin to imagine -"

"Hey, Fate?" Sakurako asked mildly. "When's the last time you petrified somebody?"

"That," he said after a moment, "is an entirely different matter."

"Oh."

"It is. I am still able to do so, even if I have not done so in some time, so it is not as though I have given up that ... it is an entirely different matter."

"Oh," she repeated. Exact same tone as before.

"Regardless ... even if Negi-kun has undergone changes, he remains able to focus on what matters rather than being distracted by trivialities and affairs of the heart with young women and -"

"Okay, that's it," Sakurako snapped, stopping the foot massage entirely and turning around to look at Fate crossly. "How did he fix the World Tree, Fate?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you know how he fixed the World Free?"

"I presume that he employed some manner of overpowered spell -"

"He was fucking Akira-san against its bark and made a Permanent Pactio or whatever with her and before that he'd doinked just about every girl in the class including me and he's probably knocking boots with Shiori right now," she told him.

A moment later, she let out an annoyed sigh. "Even this only gets your eyes to go down to little circles instead of making them bulge out of your skull? Maaaaan."

The tiny little circles kept right on gazing at her in stony silence.

"What, you think I'm making this up or something?" Sakurako asked. "I'm telling you, that's what happened. It started back when Negi-kun got aged up, that very night." She then proceeded to explain her understanding of events, which more or less coincided with events that have already been chronicled, though with perhaps incorrect amounts of emphasis on certain aspects and some details which she had largely made up out of whole cloth while _believing_ that they naturally derived from what she'd been told. Such matters will not be expanded on until they become pertinent and/or funny.

At last, she reached the end of her narrative, and looked at Fate expectantly.

The tiny little circles kept right on -

"React, dammit," she said.

"I see," he replied.

"Oh no," Sakurako groaned. "No, no, no. We are not doing the 'I see' routine again, thank you verrrry mu-"

A strange noise emitted from the general vicinity of Fate's chest. To Sakurako, who promptly fell silent, it sounded like a cough more than anything else, even though she knew, or thought she knew, that he never experienced difficulties of breathing like that. And then the sound repeated, twice in rapid sequence. They were almost deafening in the stillness which had suddenly fallen in Fate's dormitory room.

Oh so slowly, oh so terrifyingly slowly, the sides of Fate's mouth tilted upward, as he opened his mouth to let out further repetitions of that noise ... which Sakurako realized, to her shock, could only be laughter.

"Ah," Fate said, after the initial bout of hilarity ceased. "Now, _now_ we learn precisely how idiotic Inugami actually is. 'Nothing will happen', he said. 'Sakurazaki will cut you right open', he said. And what happened? Did Konoe's vaunted protector serve as a guarantor of anyone's chastity, even her own?"

"Uh, no?" Sakurako peeped.

"Indeed no!" Fate proclaimed, and then laughed some more. "Amusing! Very amusing! So! This is what self-righteousness feels like!"

"Um, you doinked me and Haruna-chan, remember, so you can't really be _too_ self-righteous," she reminded him.

"Had I, in your charming phrase, 'doinked' all of the members of your class, and not on one of those occasions only to be sociable during a time of great confusion, then I would be wrongly self-righteous. But I did not!"

"'Only to be sociable'?" Sakurako repeated.

"This is all Negi-kun's fault!"

"He pushed Haruna-chan so she slipped, fell, and landed on your dick?" Sakurako asked, growing less impressed with each passing moment.

"I will have him take responsibility for the corruption unto which Shiori and I have been unwittingly dragged!"

"The odds of you getting another foot massage are diminishing rapidly!"

"VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE! Mwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!" laughed the artificial boy.

"They're in negative numbers now!" said Sakurako, whose understanding of probability was not that good.

* * *

"So what, exactly, was the point of that?" Negi asked wearily as he slumped on the couch between Asuna and Shiori, who had reverted from her Asuna-mimicry at some point during what had ensued.

"Does there have to be a point to it?" Shiori murmured into his ear.

"Yeah, Negi, does there have to be a point to it?" Asuna murmured into his other ear.

Negi sighed. "That doesn't work under these circumstances, you know."

"I was being honest," Shiori said, sounding slightly surprised. "That's how we tend to view this place, as a land where nothing serious ever happens."

"Well, it's not -" Negi started to reply.

"Negi," Asuna interjected. "Particularizing it a little bit from 'the Old World' and even 'Japan' to 'Mahora' ... she's kinda right, you know."

"Serious things happen, here," he said, with a determined cast to his lips that was not, of course, a pout.

"How many times you almost got killed here?"

"... once!" he said triumphantly. "When I was falling, after that fight with Chao, if we hadn't both been rescued, it would have been -"

"Versus how many times you almost got killed _over there_?"

"... dammit. But still, serious things happen here!"

"Uh-huh," said Asuna, and winked at Shiori.

It was sad, how that little wink, a kindly meant gesture, made Shiori go all tense inside. _She knows,_ came the first panicked thought, followed soon by a more rueful, _Of course she knows._ There had been a time, not so terribly long ago, when she'd found herself hoping that with the Princess' retreat into the sleep of ages, there might come a time when she'd be needed to stand in her place as she had before ... that she could recapture the feeling of being at Negi-san's side that she'd known during her imposture, which had faded (as she'd known it would) once the true Asuna was recovered. She'd yearned for that. And so, in this place where nothing serious happened, she had allowed herself the opportunity to know what that might have been like, to take his confession of his feelings as being truly directed towards herself. It was harmless.

But it was known, now, and nobody could possibly have such a great heart as to allow such things to happen again.

Could they?

"Anyways, Shiori, I hope you understand how important it is that Fate can't ever find out about any of this," Negi said to her once he'd gotten over his not-pouting.

"I understand that you don't want that to happen, but I don't really understand why," she admitted. "What would he do?"

Abruptly, the door to the dorm room flew in through the short hallway leading to the entrance and smashed against the far wall. "Oh dear," Fate's voice could be heard saying, loudly but calmly. "I seem to have done damage to this door. Might I enter to discuss reparations?"

"This," said Negi and Asuna, fully synchronized, as they stood up to start getting dressed in a hurry.

* * *

"I have struggled to overcome my prejudices where the people of this world are concerned," Fate announced some time later, as he momentarily paused in his silent pacing before the assembled inhabitants of the dormitory room.

"No you haven't," Nodoka replied promptly as she sat wrapped in a bedsheet.

"I haven't seen any sign of that," Chisame agreed, just as promptly, just as bedsheeted.

"Nope, not even a hint," Makie concurred, nodding in a sober manner utterly unbecoming one who defiantly wore nothing other than a pout on her face.

Akira, who had managed to get into her bra and panties before she was hauled out of bed, was too mortified to say anything.

Ayaka was opening her mouth to offer some further testimony on the subject of Fate's struggles when the pale boy spoke again. "That the struggles have not been apparent to others should not be taken as meaning that they have not taken place. I am aware that I have had something of a chip on my shoulder about this world's inhabitants, and I have, through positive interactions with some of its denizens, gradually managed to move past them. YES I HAVE," he added, just _a bit_ louder than was truly necessary, when he saw that Nodoka had been about to offer a contrasting view of the situation.

"Fate-kun, could you please keep it down? It's early in the morning, and we don't want to disturb the neighbors. More than the explosion of the door and its replacement with a stone slab have already done," Konoka asked with surprising politeness.

"I am certain that your neighbors have long since grown used to unusual noises coming from this particular room," Fate replied.

"... well, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's earl-"

"However," Fate spoke over her. "I am sometimes disappointed to be reminded that individuals, including some of those present, exhibit behaviors which would wholly justify such prejudices as I once held. It is bad enough that they are given over to such sensual pleasures as to distract a young man from the stern burdens of his duty," he said, then paused. "And it makes matters worse when that is pointed out to them and they react not with appropriate shame but with gloating amusement."

"Hey!" Makie said, standing up on her knees and frowning angrily. "Don't be mean to Akira-chan just because Negi-kun likes her more than he likes you!"

"I was not in fact including Okochi in that latter assessment," Fate said through clenched teeth.

"Huh?"

"Akira's not gloating," Chisame whispered. "You were."

"Oh. Um. Never mind."

"But for these individuals to then draw a vulnerable and innocent visitor to this world into their debaucheries -" Fate said, really starting to rise to his point.

"It was her idea in the first place," Nodoka and Makie chorused.

And Fate fell silent.

"Um, sort of, yes," Shiori admitted, blushing brightly.

"Luna," Fate said, very quietly, as he stared at the individual whom he was addressing with, yes, tiny little circles for eyes. It seemed that he ran out of steam once he'd done so, however, for whatever else he might have wanted to say went unsaid in the silence which then fell.

"Why's he calling Shiori-chan Luna?" Makie quietly asked nobody in particular.

"That's her birth name," Chisame in particular whispered back.

"Oh."

Ignoring this byplay, Shiori drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to answer the implicit question. "I think," she said, "that I have explained to you, Fate-san, how I feel. I think that I did that. And I think that you accepted how I feel. I think that you did that. Am I wrong?"

Fate was silent for a long time, and then he replied in the same quiet tone. "You are not wrong."

"Thank you," Shiori said, looking unspeakably grateful in that moment, before her obvious anxiety returned. "Then ... it seemed to me that it was ... wrong ... for me to share my feelings with you but not, then, to share them with Negi-san. That was the conclusion that I reached. And this is what came of that conclusion.

"Or something," she added a moment later.

"Wait, so she did ecchi with Fate-kun first?" asked Makie.

"Yes, she did it with the howling hypocrite first," replied Nodoka.

"I am not howling," snapped Fate, glaring in Nodoka's direction.

"The not-howling still-a-hypocrite," Nodoka corrected without looking in Fate's direction.

"Okay," Asuna declared in a voice comparable to Fate's neighbor disturbing tone as she stood up from where she was seated on the couch with the figuratively petrified form of Negi. "This is going to go nowhere good really fast, isn't it? Therefore, as the senior entity present, I think that I and Mr. Fate should have a little chat about matters while the rest of you go wait in the corridor or maybe even back to your rooms."

"Little problem with that idea in the form of the stone slab blocking the exit," Chisame replied.

"Indeed. Maybe someone will do something about that," Asuna agreed, still gazing at Fate.

Fate glowered, but nonetheless turned to remove the slab.

"Asuna," said the abruptly figuratively-depetrified Negi. "What are you going to do?"

"Like I said, I'm going to have a little chat with Fate and -"

"Are you using chat as a euphemism?" he asked, sounding horrified.

"What? No! Where would you ... okay, yes, that is the sort of thing that I'd do, but it's not what I'm going to do this time! Geez!"

"Aw," muttered Shiori, looking downcast.

"Geez!" Asuna repeated.

* * *

"You and Bookstore really bring out the worst in each other, y'know that?" Asuna asked of Fate a few moments later, when everyone else had tromped out through the unobstructed doorway ... which was then re-obstructed by the former door, fixed into place by some creative petrification magic on Fate's part.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Fate replied.

"I mean the way her usual strong-willed, confident self goes into total overdrive, turning to rudeness, whenever you're around, and the way you seem to go out of your way to antagonize her right back. If I didn't know better, I'd say that there was some chemistry there ... but that's definitely not it," she added wryly.

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

"And I explained it and -"

"I mean that I don't see what you mean when you talk about bringing out the worst in her. As far as I can determine, that attitude is all of her."

"Fate, I'm kinda fond of Bookstore," Asuna told him after a moment. "Insulting her in my hearing - or Negi's, for that matter - is not a good way to get either of us on your side."

"I do not want -" he began to snap.

"Yeah, you do want Negi on your side," she interrupted, firmly. "We both know that's pretty high on your list of priorities."

Fate closed his eyes. "Do you truly want to know what I want, Princess Asuna?"

She decided to let that "princess" bit slide this once, given that she was in fact drawing on the authority of her position for this negotiation. "Lay it on me."

"I want to finish the job my creator gave me, to complete the rescue of Mundus Magicus, to find a way to overcome my creator without destroying myself in the process. And then, once that's done, I want to place myself and Negi-kun in suspended animation for about a million years or so, so that we can emerge in a solar system long since cleared off of the intelligent life which exists here now, so that there are _no more distractions_ ... and just be with him for the rest of eternity.

"Not in the sexual manner that the rest of you are so quick to embrace," he added hastily. "While I can engage in that mode, it is not the way my inclination lies. But just to be with him, to talk of things that matter, to strive against each other when we choose ... endlessly, through the aeons to come."

Asuna looked at him.

"A foolish dream," Fate admitted. "Impossible, now that he has shed his undying immortality. And probably impossible regardless. But it is my dream, nonetheless."

"You don't think you're going to survive the battle with the Life-Maker, do you?" she asked.

"I see myself dissolving into nothingness with his defeat," he answered. "This is the fate I expect for all of his creations ... with the exception, of course, of your inimitable self."

"If I'm inimitable, how come he tried to imitate me so many times?" Asuna asked.

"Madness. What else is there to say?"

"So, basically, you don't think you're going to be around much longer, so you'd like to spend as much time with Negi in the time you've got left as you can," she said at last. "Sounds kind of familiar. If you'd let me know about this before, we could probably have worked something out, you know."

"I do not want your pity," said Fate, a touch of his old hauteur returning.

"Good, 'cause I'm not offering it to you," Asuna replied. "You can reasonably expect to have years to spend with Negi before he's ready to confront the Life-Maker, where I was operating under the idea that I had months with everybody I care about. Even if we had worked something out, that something would not involve you getting to monopolize Negi's time. I get that your feelings are unique to you, but everybody else's feelings are unique to them, and if you have any of my pity, you have it for not getting that. My advice would be to work on getting it."

"... very well," he replied. "I will essay ... to 'get it'." Just what he thought of this latest task was readily apparent on his face.

Asuna chose to regally ignore that. "Well, at least you deserve some credit for not threatening to blackmail us in order to get your way."

"A pointless act, given that the authority to which I would threaten to expose your illicit activities is choosing to ignore my own, already known ones, as well as those of the rest of the faculty," Fate said, sounding oddly weary.

"Good point. And I guess you also deserve credit for not rejecting the notion on the grounds that if the Headmaster found out that he was fooling around with Konoka, he'd force him to marry her, which would be counter-productive."

Fate stared at her.

She stared back. "Never even crossed your mind, huh?" she asked.

"The odds of my 'getting it' are diminishing," he said moodily.

Asuna giggled. "You know, despite what I said before, I have to admit that you do have a certain enigmatic appeal, Fate-kun," she mused out loud, leaning back on the couch where she'd been sitting all this while, drawing up the hem of her bathrobe as she did. "Maybe we could settle this -"

"You're not my type," he said, and turned to leave.

* * *

Fate had told her to stay behind. She had pretty clear memories of telling him that she was going to obey him as much only as the girls in class obeyed Negi-kun, so, really, the fact that she had followed him at a safe distance was entirely his own fault. Especially since, if anything, she should be hanging around in her own dorm room instead of his.

So she followed him into the building, past a dazed but not petrified dorm manager, and up the stairs to their level. She was just climbing the last stair when she heard the explosion and his 'apology' for the same. Letting out a sigh, Sakurako started to head in the direction of Negi, Konoka and Asuna's room, then paused as she caught sight of another dorm room which had, somewhat implausibly, not opened up to allow its residents to see the source of the hub-bub. The fact that it hadn't was something of a bad sign.

She considered, and - in a moment of quantum uncertainty that could easily have gone the other way - chose to deal with _that_ situation right then rather than going on to kibitz about Fate's jealous hissy fit. It was a discussion that had been a long time coming. So, after taking a deep breath, she walked over and knocked on Haruna's door.

It opened up after a moment, with Haruna peeping out in a comically slow manner. "Since the door didn't go flying off its hinges, would I be right in guessing you're here on your own?" she asked after a brief interval of silence.

"Yes, I'm here on my own," Sakurako said as patiently as she could, which wasn't much. "Can I come in, Haruna-chan?"

"So it's Haruna-chan, now?"

"Can I come in or what?"

Haruna let the door swing the rest of the way open, and turned her back to start leading Sakurako in. Almost immediately, she was disconcerted to hear a voice singing in Chinese, loud enough to - she suspected - possibly drown out even loud noises coming from outside the dorm room. Given the givens, she wasn't surprised to see that the singer was Ku Fei, curled up in her bunk and rocking back and forth even as she sang.

"What's going on?" Sakurako asked. She didn't recognize any of the words but she did recognize that the verses that Fei was singing were all variations on each other.

"Well, I think it's a combination of shame over passing up her reunion rematch with Chao in favor of getting gangbanged -" Haruna started to explain.

Fei sang a note of purest regret.

"- mixed with a certain measure of grief over Negi choosing Akira, in as much as he's made a choice, the little harem keeper," the artist concluded. "The lyrics are pretty much, um, 'the flowers are dead, there is no morning dew, my honey is gone and I feel so blue' ... with lots and lots of substitutions in there."

Sakurako swallowed. "Ohhhhkay, then. Um ... I was hoping you and I could talk, maybe, but this is clearly going to be a distraction -"

"I'm used to it, by now," Haruna replied with a shrug. "Since she started about, oh, eight hours ago and hasn't quit since."

"Oh wow. How did you sleep?"

"What's sleep?" Haruna asked, blinking innocently.

"Oh, seriously, wow, wow, wow," Sakurako groaned, face over her hand. "This is really not how I want to talk about things ..."

"What things?" Haruna asked, blinking innocently.

"What things?" Sakurako repeated, somewhat more loudly and higher pitched.

"Isn't that what I just said?" Haruna asked, blinking ... you get the idea. "I'm really not sure, I might have imagined it."

"I'm talking about how I have a crush on you and have had one since we were little kids!" Sakurako ranted.

"Oh, that."

Sakurako gaped. "Oh, that?" she repeated.

"Wow," said Haruna, eyes gone all sparkly. "Did Fate-kun give you mind-reading powers when you pactio'd with him? So cool! You should totally have a mind-reading duel with Nodochin! How do mind-reading duels work, though?"

"You said it out loud you spacy -"

"Awwww," Haruna sighed, now gone downcast. "I guess it was too much to hope for that you'd know how mind-reading duels work, then." Another sigh, a long one this time. Then she perked up again. "So what were we talking about, just now?"

With great difficulty and lots of practice drawn from dealing with Fate and Misa, Sakurako controlled her urge to kill, covering one shaky fist with the palm of her other hand. "We were talking about me, crushing on you, and how we need to talk about it now that me, crushing on you, has turned into me, fucking with you!"

Haruna gazed at her in silence, mouthing the words just said without actually speaking them. "I think if Yuetchin were, she'd say that there was a fundamental flaw in your premise," she finally replied.

"What flaw?" Sakurako demanded.

"Well, I'm honestly not sure what she'd say next, but the flaw that I'm seeing is the lack of a causal connection between us needing to talk about something because we fucked. A lot of people have fucked, but they don't necessarily have to talk about it afterwards, or want to, even. For example - hey, Ku? You wanna talk to or even see any of the martial arts boys you let make you airtight the other day?"

"... 沒有朝露," Fei sang sorrowfully. (Méiyǒu zhāolù, for those who can't read Chinese characters.)

"See?"

"You're unbelievable," said Sakurako.

"Gee, thanks!"

Thankfully, Sakurako didn't actually hear that remark as she warmed to her topic. "This, this is why I never told you about it. I knew that if you did, all you'd ever do would be to crack jokes! Yes, we have a lot of fun as cheerleaders, but we take things seriously _sometimes_! You have never ever understood that, have you! You never will! Agggggh! Between this and someone whose sense of humor is terrible, give me Fate-kun any day of the flipping week!" On that note, she whirled on her heel and stormed out of the dorm room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Haruna stood in silence, watching the door vibrate.

"I think maybe you could handled that better," Fei informed her from the top bunk, having stopped singing while Sakurako ranted.

"Konoka told me about training with Li Shu-Wen before she told you," Haruna answered without looking up at her roommate ... and speaking in a much less vague tone.

Fei went back to singing, now sounding even more tragic.

* * *

When at last Fate managed to escape from Negi's dormitory, and what he chose to view as Kagarazuka's pathetic attempt at seduction which had not tempted him even a little bit, and the stammering apologies and reassurances about the project that Negi offered him, and the hostile glares of the girls who continued to surround Negi as he did so, he proceeded to make his way out of the building in stony silence. He paused on the doorstep as he saw Sakurako sitting on the stairs leading up to the door, facing away from him and slumped in a way conveying obvious dejection.

"I told you to stay behind," he said, simply stating a fact, no condemnation or anger in his tone.

Sakurako sighed. "Yeah, you did," she said. "That was a smart thing you said, then. If I'd done that, I'd probably be a lot happier right now. You gave some really smart advice, smart guy. You should go be a teacher, you're so smart." All of this delivered in a weary monotone.

Over the interval of her response, he had come over to sit down beside her. "You visited Saotome."

"Again with the smartness. Boiling over with the smartness, you."

"I'm surprised you didn't retreat to the room you share with your teammates," he mused aloud.

She shrugged, still without looking at him. "I knew what they'd say if I told them about this."

"Hm. There is a fable," Fate abruptly announced.

"Say what?"

"A fable. 'Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked "Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes." People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves,'" he concluded.

"... is the fox meant to be me?" Sakurako asked, slightly bewildered.

"It might be you. It might be your friends. It might be Saotome." He paused, then shrugged. "It might be me. It seems to be a fairly widely applicable moral."

"Huh," she said.

They sat a while in silence.

"I find your unhappiness regrettable," Fate said eventually.

"Yeah. Backatcha."

And then they sat a while in silence even longer.

* * *

"Eventually, when the sun had risen high enough in the sky, they - or at least Sakurako - grew tired of sitting there and got up to go get some coffee together," Kozue said with the air of one concluding her narration.

As it became perfectly clear that that was exactly what she had done, Asuna blinked her eyes slowly. "Is that it?" she asked.

"For now. I do need to take some water before I continue. While I have a lot of wonderful talents, not needing food or drink isn't among them."

"Oh," Asuna said. "Then ... you're descended from Negi and that Shiori girl?"

Kozue paused in drinking from the flask she kept by her side, raising an eyebrow in a way that reminded Asuna very much of Yue. "If I gave you that impression, I apologize. No. This first part of the story was about how two of my great-grandparents grew a little closer than they already had, but the grandparent in question was one of the children Fate and Sakurako had together. Did you think Negi was my only ancestor? That would make this a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry complicated bloodline, instead of just a complicated one."

"I suppose so," Asuna admitted. "Then was Akira the ancestor who was with Negi?"

"Complicated," she repeated, smiling warmly. Then she took a deep breath. "But I'll tell you a story that you'll need to understand part of that one, now."

* * *

"I'm in da money! I'm in da money! I gottalotta what it takes to get along!" sang Albert Chamomile brokenly as he danced around his computer, currently displaying his bank balance.

Not only had his unspoken dread that the permanent contract, which Negi had somehow stumbled into in that terrible time when his aniki had been bereft of his sage counsel, would result in the dissolution of all of Negi's temporary contracts - thus cutting off a critical stream of revenue that Chamo always used only for aniki's benefit and never for his own selfish purposes -

Chamo paused, and coughed, trying to get the strange black covering which had suddenly appeared on his tongue off of it.

\- but rather, he continued to narrate to himself and anyone who happened to be listening in on his thoughts at the moment, the permanent contract seemed to pay out _dividends_ which seemed to be influenced by the mutual affection rating between Akira-nego and whoever else Negi had a contract with! And that _weird_ contract that had Negi as ... _somebody's_ ministra was also paying out money into Chamo's account, even though he didn't have any relationship with that anonymous entity!

Life was grand!

And yet!

Anything could be improved, and Chamo saw potential for improvement. Yes! The time had come at last for Anya-nego to admit her feelings for Negi and be joined with him in a pactio which would firmly establish once and for all who wore the pants in their relationship. (Which was Negi, of course, no matter what might have happened in some of the weirder moments of their relationship.) And once that and a few more pactios had been made, he would work night and day to make sure that they all loved Akira-nego and she loved all of them, thus ensuring that the money would keep flowing in for all time!

"We're in the money! Come on ma honey! Let's lend it! Spend it! Send it _rooooooollllin'_ -"

"You're noisy," said Asuna, opening the closet door and smiting him.

 **To Be Continued**

 _Author's Note_

 _So here we are again. Back for another go at it, this time no longer following all the rules that I set down for myself, so girls outside the class are possible partners, people may turn out to be related to each other without knowing it, Chamo will still not get laid ... yes, it's good to still have some things the same, don't you think?_

 _Let's see how this goes._

 _A side story to this one is already in progress, OverMaster's **Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey** , which crosses the side story to the previous iteration with his own **Unequally Emotional and Rational** series to produce something ... unique, to say the least. Check it out if you liked this. **  
**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey II:  
A Complicated Bloodline  
Chapter 2**

"Oh God!" Asakura cried, her back arching, her hands clawing on the white mattress, her eyes tightening closed. "Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God! Sayoooooooooo!"

And then her mind was blown while her naked body rattled one last time for the night, her legs squeezing Yue's head between her thighs, and after what seemed an eternity, a sweet long sigh of relief left Kazumi's lips.

Slowly, silently, the young philosopher rose from between Kazumi's legs, calculatedly licking the slick wetness left on her fingers. "I wonder if I should be bothered by that last ecstatic utterance?" she finally asked.

Kazumi grunted while blocking her own eyes with a forearm. "I'm sorry. I didn't ... but yeah, I'd rather be with her. There it is. I'm sorry," she said again.

"And yet, she isn't here now," the other nude young woman said, shifting up so as to sit by Asakura's side. "If you don't mind my asking ..."

Kazumi sighed. "She's just trying to cope with it, you know. Making up for all the lost time with... well, him. I can't stop her from doing so. It wouldn't be fair. He was part of her life too, long before me."

"Just like Nodoka was part of mine, long before Negi-sensei," Yue said, voice steady and calm, betraying no pain. "And yet."

"Please. I don't want to talk about that. Ours is ... a different case."

"What I'm trying to say is that it's okay to be hurt, and it's okay to be ... not sorry," Yue said, bending down to brush a kiss against Kazumi's forehead, , reaching over to gently caress one of Asakura's nipples, admiring her beauty. The taller girl merely flinched in a mixture of pleasure and discomfort.

"But I am ... sorry," Kazumi said, biting back a gasp. "It's kind of rare, for me, you know," she added, a ghost of her old humor resurfacing.

"I know," Yue agreed. Her eyes flickered over to the dorm room's third inhabitant, sitting in a chair nearby, watching with horrified curiosity and eyes fairly firmly focused on the fourth largest breasts in the class. "She might not, though."

"Ummmm," said Anya, currently looking her actual age and rather startled that they'd realized that she was awake.

"Eh, good point," Kazumi agreed. "You gonna watch or join in, Anya-chan?"

"Erk?" Anya replied, hair on end. "D-don't be silly! I couldn't possibly join in! Shame on you for suggesting such things to an innocent child such as myself!"

As one, Kazumi and Yue turned to look at the bottle of age-up pills resting on the dorm room's desk, then back to Anya.

"Ghhhhhggghhhh!" Anya explained.

Any further discussion on the subject was abruptly tabled as the door to the dorm room opened and Nodoka, wrapped in a bed sheet and unhappiness, came in. "I'm back," she announced.

"Welcome home," said Yue, looking levelly at her from the lower bunk where she was ensconced with Kazumi. "Wasn't the plan to call in sick today and switch over around noon?"

"The plan was also not to have Fate show up just after dawn and start making a pest of himself," Nodoka replied, letting the sheet drop and walking over to the dresser to start pulling out clothes. "The plan clearly did not survive contact with the enemy."

"Fate knows?" Anya yelped. "He knows about all of us?"

Nodoka put on her bra and looked at Anya, then back and forth between their guest and the bed with a curious expression on her face, then shrugged while picking up her panties. "No, not about you. I don't think Sakurako-san could have told him about you, since you hadn't joined us when she found out and technically still haven't done so, yet. But I suspect that Negi _will_ tell him about you after you join him tonight, in the interest of keeping Fate up to speed and being honest and forthright and all that sort of thing." Her tone left just what she thought about 'all that sort of thing' somewhat obscure.

"Well, maybe not, if we can convince him that a gentleman never discusses such matters," Asakura volunteered.

"I think he views himself as a very fallen gentleman, unfortunately," said Yue, visibly vacillating between getting out of bed to get dressed herself, and remaining there and (perhaps) tempting Nodoka to join her. After a moment, though, the hesitation passed, and she got up to head over to the dresser drawers herself.

"But there's a better solution to the problem!" Anya said. "I just won't do it!"

Now Nodoka and Yue paused, looking at her in union. "But it was your idea in the first place," they chorused.

"It was that Shiori girl's idea in the first place, I just came up with the means and then got talked into joining in eventually," Anya replied quickly. "That's how it was!" she snapped when Asakura started to say something that might hypothetically have been a contradiction of her version of events. "And anyway, I've had second thoughts about the whole thing. Make that third or fourth thoughts, even."

"She's really like you," Nodoka observed to Yue.

"I can't really argue with that," Yue agreed, shaking her head sorrowfully. "Are we going to drag her in like you dragged me?"

"Let's not!" Anya interjected. "For pity's sake, Fate is involved now! Don't you realize what that means?"

"I know that he's a little scary, Anya-chan, but -" Nodoka started to say.

"No, see, that's the thing! He's not a little scary. He is an oh-god-I-don't-believe-in-that-is-terrifying amount of scary!" Anya interrupted. Whatever trifling battlefield encounters and later classroom ordeals this girls had undertaken did not rate in comparison to being held hostage by Fate and his minions for months, always wondering if this would be the day that they'd decide that her presence was surplus to requirements. She doubted that anything, even being petrified by Fate, could possibly rate.

"I think you're really overreacting, Anya-chan," said Nodoka as she pulled on her uniform blouse and started to button it up. "But if you're really that frightened of him, it's okay. Because ..." And here she paused, and smiled at Yue, who nodded.

And then, in perfect synchronicity, Nodoka, Yue and Kazumi chorused, "That guy is going down."

Anya stared at them - okay, technically, only at Nodoka and Yue, who were in her field of vision while Kazumi lay outside of it - for a full minute before she let out the shriek she'd been holding back. "Are you kidding me? Your solution to the problem of the superhuman monster who's threatening us is to provoke him further? To make him finally lose his grip and kill us all? Seriously?"

"Anya-chan!" Nodoka gasped. "Calm down, please!"

"Sayo?" Kazumi asked, sitting up in the bunk.

The interjection was sufficiently out of nowhere that it even distracted Anya from her panicked/angry breakdown, so she turned to look at Kazumi at the same time as Nodoka and Yue.

"Oh!" Kazumi said, nodding. "So that means you can do this whenever you sleep, then? That's pretty cool. So then - hey, Sayo, am I still the only one who can see you? Oh? Well, I guess I'm flattered and - wait, really? Even when you're doing this? Sure, I'd love a demonstraaaaaaaayyyyy!"

Her reply turned into a shriek almost as loud as the one Anya had let out a few moments before as she abruptly flew out of bed and began hovering in mid-air above the dorm room's kitchenette, legs spread and arms stretched out over her head.

"Ah, she must have been talking about Sayo's artifact," Yue observed calmly.

"Whawhawhawhawhawhawha?" Nodoka asked, perhaps a bit less calmly.

"S-s-sayo!" Asakura stammered, the smile on her face suggesting that whatever she was experiencing at the moment wasn't exactly fear or concern. "Wait a minute, m-maybe we ought to wait until we're back in our own roooooooohhhhhhmahgawwwwwddd!" she concluded as, in plain view of the three other girls in the room, her vulva dilated as though being pushed back by fingers ... or an arm. "Oh, fucking hell, that feels so fucking good!" she shrieked.

"Well, this is a bit em-" Yue started to say.

" _Hot,_ ," whispered Nodoka loudly as she started to undo her blouse.

"Or hot," Yue continued. "Perhaps hot is the better word."

Nodoka nodded as she finished undoing her blouse and started undoing Yue's.

"Ohhhhhkay, then," Anya declared. "Have fun, you crazy kids!" And with that, she grabbed her age distortion pills and exited the room quite briskly.

"What am I gonna do?" she asked herself as she made her way down the hallway. "What am I gonna do?"

"Oh dear," cried a tinny voice, jolting Anya out of her preoccupations. She looked up to see that Chamo was in the corridor ahead of her, working with a paint brush and a placard which read, "Make A Pactio With Negi To Improve Your Lif." The last character in the statement was only partially written. "Is something the matter, Anya-nego?" the ermine asked, eyes twinkling.

Anya let out a disgusted sigh.

* * *

Elsewhere that morning ...

"Wow, I love cleaning the mass hall, don't you, Cocone-chan?" Misora exclaimed in a rather maniacal way as she did just that.

Cocone did not reply to Misora. Cocone did not look at Misora. Cocone quietly and efficiently did the task which Sister Shakti had mumbled out orders for the two of them to do this morning, without ever looking at or speaking to Misora.

"It's times like this that we realize that cleanliness really is next to godliness, just like erring is human but forgiving is divine, don't you think, Cocone-chan?"

Cocone did not reply, et cetera, et cetera.

"I think I might be pregnant, do you have any thoughts on that matter, Cocone-chan?"

There might just possibly have been the slightest momentary pause in Cocone's motions after that remark, but if so, it was too brief for Misora to notice.

Misora kept gazing at the back of Cocone's head for a few moments, before finally dropped the broom she was holding, let out a wail and dropped to her knees. "Cocone-chan, please! Please talk to me! I'm sorry! I know I did wrong, and I'm going to try to never do it ever again, so please, I really need my best friend back!"

Now the pause was more than momentary. Cocone lowered her head, then turned back to Misora with a gentle smile on her face. "Oh, Misora, that's all I really wanted to hear. An apology, an acknowledgement of wrong-doing, and a vague promise to avoid such wrong-doing in the future ... what more could I possibly ask from you?" she said, shining in the sunlight streaming in through the windows, flowers seeming to bloom around her, kittens mewing and puppies making puppy noises in the distance, all things good and innocent embodied in her person.

"Really?" Misora asked, reaching out to her.

"NO!" Cocone snapped, beatific aura promptly dispersing. "I am _mad_ at you, Misora, and I want to _be mad_ at you for a while! Save your apologies for when I'm ready to listen to them, because I'm not there yet!"

"But it wasn't my fault! There was this gas and -"

"I went to Evangeline-san and she told me that the gas didn't make anyone do anything that they didn't want to do on some level!" Cocone interrupted.

"You went to Evangeline-san?" Misora gaped.

"That should not be your take-away from this conversation!" Cocone growled. "Just clean the mass hall like Sister Shakti told us, and let me stay mad for a while!"

"... okay," Misora replied, dejectedly.

Cocone watched her ministra go back to work, and let out a quiet sigh ... smiling for exactly one tenth of a second, before she went back to work herself.

* * *

"I'm not going to ask you for help, Chamo," Anya declared, glaring down at the ermine.

"But whyever not, anego?"

"Because whatever advice you gave me would just be chosen to get me to make a pactio with Negi!"

Standing before a partially finished sign advising people to do just that, Chamo piously declared, "I don't know what could possibly give you that impression."

" _Chamo!_ "

"Oh, this?" Chamo continued, all innocence, as he gestured back towards the placard. "This isn't directed at you, silly! Why would I make a sign in Japanese to get the attention of a girl who grew up speaking English? Give me a little credit, sis!"

Entirely against her will, Anya found herself subsiding a bit in response to this honestly good point. "Well ... then ... how do you speak Japanese, anyway? I learned it after I found out that Ne - that I had perfectly good reasons to learn it which we don't need to discuss at this point. But why do you -"

"Anya. Anya, Anya, Anya. I'm an _elf_. I speak all languages like a native, for such is the nature of elfish magic," Chamo reminded her.

"Oh."

"Now, back to our earlier topic ... while I do think that making a pactio with aniki would be a great way to improve your life -"

"I _knew_ it!" she growled, and reached out to grab the ermine.

"- nevertheless!" Chamo continued, dodging back out of her reach. "I am also aware that someone as clever as you must surely have plans, well-thought out plans, to improve your life and avoid troubles that don't rely on such an alliance! Clever and cunning you would never find yourself wandering a hallway wondering aloud what you should do about something!"

Anya, entirely aware that she'd entered this conversation doing just that, fought the urge to say some rather unfortunate things.

"Besides, all that such a pactio could give someone as capable as you is a tiny bit of additional confidence, rather than a magical artifact and _also_ some confidence! And it's not like you're lacking for confidence, any more than the other girls surrounding Negi are lacking in that area!"

"Well ... but ..."

"Now, if you'll please excuse me," Chamo said, lifting up his brush once more. "As aniki's agent, I have a financial _and_ moral obligation to see that he continues to make advantageous alliances, and I'm sure that the additional ones he makes won't result in you being sidelined even further from your self-appointed duties to protect him and turn you into a background character who hardly ever shows up and -"

"All right, already!" Anya wailed.

"Dear me, that was a rather excited utterance," Chamo said mildly, pausing in his calligraphy.

"You win, Chamo," she said wearily. Her hands clutched in front of her as she gazed down at the ermine, willing herself to seem as earnest as possible. "I would like to make a pactio with Negi, to help him and to save myself. Please, will you help me to do that?"

"Welllllllll," Chamo said, tapping the handle of the brush against the side of his head and inadvertently dripping a few drops of ink on top of it. "I'm not sure."

"... Chamo, we've known each other for a while, so you should be aware that there are some really profound limits on my ability to control my temper," said Anya, earnest expression banished.

"Nevertheless," he continued in a patient manner, "things have changed quite a bit since the first time I suggested you form a pactio with aniki, all those many years ago."

"It was two weeks after our graduation, so it wasn't even _a_ year ago."

Chamo ignored that pointless interjection. "He's got a permanent pactio now, you know, and I have to consider how each new pactio will affect that relationship, too. It's a matter of subtlety and careful choices, and also hard decisions that must be made with dispassionate -"

"You make more money if his probationary pactios get along with his permanent one, don't you," Anya accused in a very level tone.

"... I couldn't possibly comment about the mechanics of the pactio system, it is a forbidden and taboo subject, and anyway any money I make is always used on aniki's behalf, so there," he concluded, having spoken very very quickly. "Now, on to a completely different topic - what do you think about Akira-nego?"

"I knew it," she said, disgustedly.

"You suspected that she would be the one to capture aniki's heart?" he asked, feigning astonishment rather easily.

"That's not even remotely what I was saying you horrible little creature and -" With an effort which should, in her opinion, make her a latter day legend, Anya controlled her urge to rant. After a deep breath, she continued in a more measured manner. "I like Okochi-san just fine. I have no problem with her. I don't know if I believe that she can look after Negi as well as he will always need to be looked after, but I also understand that she is the girl he has _currently_ chosen to do so, and so it's really none of my business anyway. I haven't had much contact with her, but she seems nice."

"I see," said Chamo, nodding. "And what about her boobs?!" he asked sharply.

She smiled coolly, unfazed. "I'm not the little girl I was, so long ago, Chamo."

"It was even more recently than when I first suggested you should make a pactio with aniki, so lay off the 'so long ago' bit," he interrupted.

"Ahem. I have moved past feeling jealous or uncomfortable around girls who have significant mammary development or other curviness, because I know that such feelings indicate a shallowness on my part, a willingness to judge others by their appearances. And because I know that I can be just as curvy with one little pill," she added, holding up the jar filled with little pills as an example.

"Admirable!" exclaimed Chamo, clapping his paws together. "Very admirable! And I'm sure that once you explain your feelings to Akira-nego, she'll agree with me that you should join Negi's association."

"That won't be any problem," Anya said, even as the Inner Anya began shrieking in unholy horror at having to go through this _again_.

* * *

It had been quite some time since Tsukuyomi had been disturbed and disgusted by the sight of her putative guardians coupling in front of her, which sensation had been worsened by an odd presentiment that she could no longer remember clearly. It had been long enough that such sentiments, immediate and pre-, had faded from her mind, leaving her only weary and annoyed by her continued captivity. She remained alert enough to realize that her guardians had been removed from duty and that their replacements had also left her to her own devices for quite some time.

Her abandonment inevitably led to her consideration of notions of escape, but she dismissed such ideas out of hand. To escape now would require effort on her part with only the reward of her liberation, whereas to bide her time, rebuild her strength, wait for the guards to return, and _then_ seize an opportunity to wreak bloody havoc on those who dared to hold her captive would reward her with both her liberation and the wonderful sensation which could only be obtained through the violent death of her opponents. The choice, then, was an obvious one.

In the distance, she heard a door open, and her pulse slightly quickened at the thought that the moment, the glorious moment of her release - in more than one sense of the term - was drawing nigh. And then there were footsteps, surprisingly light footsteps, drawing closer to the cell where she presently lay imprisoned. Had they sent one of their charming young ladies to keep a watch on her in this early morning? As soon as the thought occurred to her, another realization clawed at her awareness - she knew that gait. It was the gait she knew best in the world.

And so, with a smile, she opened her eyes and grinned broadly as she looked towards her cell door. "Semmmmpai," she crooned.

"Good morning, Tsukuyomi," Her Sempai said, regarding her with a cold, analytical gaze. Tsukuyomi disliked that gaze. The heady mixture of panic and arousal that _should_ be there when they met was so much better on Her Sempai's features. But she supposed that it couldn't be helped, since this time Her Sempai had the advantage of her, where it was usually the other way around when they'd met in the past. She kept grinning.

And Her Sempai kept gazing.

The silence was oppressive. So Tsukuyomi decided to rebel against it. "Did you come to serve me breakfast? How swee-"

Her Sempai cut her off with a sharp shake of her head. "I came to talk. About you ... and me ... and us. I want to know ... just how exactly do you think that this _thing_ we have is going to end?"

Tsukuyomi blinked. "By 'this thing', do you mean the thing where I try to kill you and you try to kill me and we fight and fight and fight?"

"I suppose that you would view it that way. I have a different perspective on matters ... but that can wait. Yes. That thing. How you think it's going to end?"

Tsukuyomi spread her hands, still grinning. "There's really only one way that it can end. Either I kill you - which is obviously what I prefer to happen - or you kill me - an outcome less desirable but not without its own charms. Are you feeling well, Sempai? This really shouldn't need an explanation." A horrible thought occurred to her. "Have you been seduced off the path by whatever it was that happened here recently?"

"... I'm not honestly sure how to answer that question," Her Sempai answered in a remarkably frank manner. "But that's not important. What is important is that I'm a bit confused about one thing in your vision about how this is supposed to work. I hope maybe you can clarify this for me."

"I think you should clarify something else first," Tsukuyomi objected, a bit frantically.

"Tough. What in your practical experience leads you to the conclusion that you are able to kill me?"

Tsukuyomi stared. "I - what? Obviously I can -"

"The only time you've come close to defeating me is when you had the advantage of a cheat - the Hina - that I didn't know about, _and_ I was distracted by matters outside of the duel. It was a perfect storm of factors that are unlikely to arise again, no matter what sort of trick you find, because I am still growing stronger ... and you're not."

"On the other hand, you will always be distracted," Tsukuyomi answered, no longer grinning. "Always. I can always -"

"Those that I care about can defeat you, too. That's established. And in a way ... in a very real sense, your threatening other people to gain an advantage in our fights proves that you do understand more about how people _should_ act than you pretend to understand, that you are a lot less of a bloodthirsty monster than you'd like me to believe. Someone like that wouldn't threaten to hurt people's loved ones in order to distract them. They wouldn't understand having loved ones. You clearly do ... and what motivates you, I think, is envy of me for having them when you don't, just like you envy my mastery of our style. Just like you want to believe that I envy your supposed freedom."

"What are you -"

"Here's how I think this thing will end," said The Person Who Looked Like Her Sempai But Clearly Wasn't. "I will keep fighting you every time you show up, and every time, no matter what cheat you bring, no matter how distracted I am, I will find a way to win. And I will defeat you without having to kill you. Every. Single. Time. And you will never get better, because you rely on cheats, and your reputation will suffer, and eventually your youth will have passed and you will have nothing to show for it. And I will still defeat you without having to kill you. Every. Single. Time." She nodded, then turned to go.

"Or," Sakurazaki Setsuna said over her shoulder, "you could find someone else to bother. That would be ... less desirable but not without its charms."

And then she was gone.

Tsukuyomi started screaming.

* * *

Taking a moment to remind herself that this was, in fact, her own idea, Anya knocked on the door to announce herself, and then went in. She was pleasantly surprised to find that Negi did not in fact have girls literally hanging all over him at the moment. Instead, he was sitting on the couch, in his aged up form, beside that Akira girl, both of them doing their best to look as though they hadn't been frantically sucking face before the knock on the door. Anya supposed that someone else might have been fooled.

"Good morning, Anya," Negi said, faux-cheerfully. "Is something the matter?"

"Yes," she answered reflexively, and was rewarded by the sight of the two of them sitting up even straighter than they had been, breath quickening and all that. "But also no," she added quickly, and saw them subside a bit. _Agggh,_ she thought, _why am I so nervous, you'd think that I liiiiii-errk._ She forced herself to stop thinking, which unfortunately made it somewhat hard to speak.

"Anya-san?" Akira asked after a moment.

Thoughts successfully restarted, Anya began again. "I," she declared, "have been thinking."

When it became apparent that this statement was apparently meant to stand alone, Negi was moved to reply, "That's a good habit to get into."

Annoyed that, once again, Negi was not following the script, Anya coughed loudly. "I have been thinking, specifically, that, now that you are no longer an undying immortal, you will once again require pactio partners who can assist you in battle. And, since I already have some experience in the area of keeping you out of trouble, I thought that I might volunteer. For the job. So. How about it?"

"Oh!" Negi said, blinking. "Well, I'm very flattered, Anya, but I don't think that you need to -"

Anya coughed loudly again.

"Yes?" said Negi, who'd learned to recognize an interjection through painful experience.

"I was asking Akira-san, not you," she said flatly.

"You were?" he asked, startled.

"You were?" Akira asked, invisibly startled.

"As the ... permanent pactio partner, she - you," Anya corrected, turning from Negi to Akira as she did, "should be the one to make decisions about who gets to make a probationary pactio with your magister. That's only right."

"I see," said Akira, blinking as she considered this weighty responsibility which had descended on her.

Anya nodded in emphasis, and prepared for a long series of questions about her intentions and experience.

Akira nodded back. "All right, then. Go ahead and do it."

Anya briefly found herself yearning for the days when Negi only slightly departed from the script. "Just like that?" she asked, hollowly.

"Really?" Negi asked, no less startled, though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

"When I make decisions about our ... relationship," Akira answered Negi, blushing slightly, "I find myself asking one question, over and over again. What would Makie do? And this is what Makie would do, I think."

Negi visibly swallowed. "It is, isn't it. Um, it's all right to be a _little_ less generous than Makie, though."

"Really?" she asked.

Anya coughed again, seeing fairly clear signs that her presence was about to be forgotten as these two disappeared into their own little world. "Okay then." She'd hoped for some more time, but what could not be cured must be endured. "Let's do it," she concluded, pulling out her own jar of age-up pills.

"Um, Anya, there's just one thing," Negi interjected.

She froze. "What, what?"

"... even if you age yourself up, the picture on the card will still reflect your actual age," he told her. "And appearance. And -"

With an effort which should, in her opinion, make her a latter day legend, Anya controlled her urge to beat Negi senseless. "I know that," she growled.

Chamo, who _just happened_ to be outside the dorm room for no particular reason, cheerfully ambled in to draw the pactio circle, humming Richard Wagner's _Wedding Chorus_ as he did. This did nothing for Anya's incredible discomfort with this entire situation. She was sure that Akira had to be picking up on the subtext of the ermine's 'song' even though all that the swimmer's expression showed was a polite interest in these activities. But if she physically stopped Chamo from doing that or anything else, by stepping on him, that would just delay everything _and_ bring it all out into the open and that would just be awful and like a nail that was sticking out -

 _Agggggh!_ Anya finally shrieked inwardly. _I'm Russian and I grew up in Wales! Why am I acting so Japanese?!_

"All done!" Chamo announced.

Nodding, Negi took his position in the circle, bending down slightly in preparation for Anya's arrival. It was so unfair that he was going to be that much taller than she was when they were actually fifteen! Should she invest in some platform shoes to make up for it?

"Whenever you're ready, Anya," Negi helpfully informed her.

Rather than wait for the thirty-second of Neverember, though, she stepped into the circle and looked up into that disturbingly handsome face. The light surrounding them seemed to surge up as he bent closer.

"Wait," she said abruptly.

He pulled back a bit, and his eyes met hers with a question hanging between them.

"This ... this isn't just for me," she said, searching desperately for words in her head. "This is also for Nekane-san."

"It is?" Negi asked dubiously.

"Yes! And the Magus! And Donet! And all our classmates!" she continued, somewhat wildly. "It's a promise, you see! A promise that you won't just spend your whole life over here, or over there, but that sometimes you'll come back to the place where you grew up and learned and were a complete dumbass oh so much of the time! That's what this kiss means!" she concluded.

"... I'm not all that keen on kissing you on behalf of all of our classmates. Some of them were very unpleasant people, on the whole," Negi confessed.

"Negiiiii!"

"But I'm happy to kiss you on behalf of Anya, who was always there for me whenever I needed a dear friend," he added, smiling warmly. And then he bent down and pressed her lips to hers.

There had been a few moments in all of this where Anya had entertained the notion of using all her power to turn the kiss around and somehow make Negi into _her_ ministra. Supposedly, something like that had happened when he kissed that obnoxious Class Representative person, and since Anya actually had magic instead of just being a complete nutbar, it should work for her, too. She was even contemplating that in the instant before their lips touched.

It vanished like morning dew in a firestorm.

When she regained awareness, Negi was holding out a card which depicted her holding a crystal ball and smiling broadly. _Anatasia Juraevna Cocolauva,_ it proclaimed her, with the title, _Puella Flagrans_.

"Oh," she said, surprised at how warm that sight made her feel.

"Now ... about the other thing," Negi said. He hesitated, murmured, "Well, it worked once, right? Ahem. We don't have to do anything if you don't want to," he declared loudly.

For a moment, she wondered what he was talking about. Then she understood exactly what he was talking about. "I never said I didn't want to!" she snapped reflexively. _Oh piss up a rope, why did I_ say _thaaaat!_

"Too much to hope for," Negi mused. "All right, then, we -"

"Yes," Akira said, from behind Anya and in her blind spot. "We." And then Anya felt a second warm body pressing against her own.

"Yes, oui!" Chamo cried from out of sight.

For a horrifying instant, Anya expected to feel him wrapping around her ankle or something, but then Negi cleared his throat. "Chamo-kun. Out."

"But aniki! You let me watch your blessed union with anego, so I don't see -"

"No, and you won't see this, either. OUT."

Muttering imprecations, Chamo ambled towards the door and into Anya's line of sight. She was torn between relief at his departure and bewilderment that she was about to voluntarily with no gas involved do something that her heart wasn't remotely ready for ... but she gave herself up for loved.

Then the door slammed open and crushed Chamo behind it as Zazie Rainyday entered at a run. "Negi - I need your help," she declared.

* * *

The sound of the door slamming its way open - after it had just been repaired only a few hours ago, too! - roused Asuna out of her self-absorption as the other noises coming from the dorm room hadn't, and she decided the time had come to get out of the shower. She shut it off, stepped out of the stall and dried herself off, wrapping herself in one towel and her hair in another, before heading out.

"What's shaking?" she asked, in the moment before she saw Zazie standing by the door with an annoyed look on her face while Anya seemed to be trying to reach Zazie and claw at her with her fingers, held back from doing so by Negi with difficulty. "... perhaps I should have asked, what did I miss?"

"Agh. Welcome back, Asuna, I'm glad you're done, agh, sulking," Negi replied when Anya stopped shouting imprecations in Russian for a moment.

"I wasn't sulking," Asuna corrected.

With the exception of Akira, everyone in the room paused to give her a dubious look.

"I _wasn't_ ," she insisted. "I just felt like showering for a few hours for ... no particular reason. Ahem. Zazie-san, what brings you here?" she asked, imitating the subject-changing method Setsuna had demonstrated for her once.

"A problem," reported Zazie. "A serious problem. But perhaps rather than dealing with this problem we should focus on the futile attempts of this young hoyden to do me harm."

"You think so?" Akira asked.

"No," Zazie replied in a tone unchanged from her earlier report.

"вы просто позвоните мне разбитная?" Anya demanded.

Asuna sighed, walked over to where Anya was standing and fingerflicked the younger girl in the middle of the forehead. "Sit down, all right?" she said to Anya, who'd just fallen silent.

Anya, eyes swirly, did not resist as Negi gently led her over to the couch. "All right, so what's the matter?" he asked.

"Shortly after the World Tree was restored to health, I attempted to contact my sister to inform her of that development," Zazie explained. "I was unable to do so through any of the direct communication links, nor through indirect channels. She has apparently disappeared."

"That's terrible," Akira gasped. "You must be so worried!"

Zazie blinked. "Yes," she said, sounding oddly surprised. "Somewhat to my surprise, I _am_ worried. That is not the reason that I bring this to your attention, Negi. My people are not - normally - motivated by such sentimental notions, and there is a concrete reason for me to alert you to this."

Asuna went pale. "Oh, no. Don't tell me -"

"Correct, Your Highness," Zazie said, nodding as to a peer. "If my sister disappears for too long, she will be declared dead and, as her heir, I will be expected to take over her duties ... and let those I have held to this point, such as maintaining my circus and supporting Negi's time travel project, slip into the hands of others. Others who have no reason to devote themselves to the latter project, as I have."

"... we need to find your sister," Negi said after a moment.

"Yeah, definitely," Asuna agreed. "Okay, we're first going to have to figure out how we're going to get to Venus."

"The demon world is Venus?" Negi asked, surprised.

"... you didn't already know that?" she replied, then glanced back at Zazie. "You didn't mention it?"

"It did not seem pertinent," Zazie answered with a shrug.

"Well, where did you think it was, some huge cave inside the Earth or something?" Asuna asked Negi, spreading her hands.

"There's a precedent for that," he observed mildly.

"This entire conversation ranks among the most disturbing that I've ever listened to, and, considering Makie's not here, that's saying something," Akira declared softly.

"There is wisdom in that statement, Okochi Akira," Zazie agreed.

"... I was trying to be funny more than anything else."

"Nevertheless. Transport to my world will not be an issue - there is a small smuggler's passageway in the hills, not too far from a similar one which leads to the Magical World. Neither are much used in these days of relatively free movement between the worlds. A small party can safely pass and find themselves in relatively safe territory."

Asuna nodded. "All right, then, all we have to do is decide who's coming. Konoka and Setsuna are a given and I'm sure that Zazie why are you shaking your head?"

"Because I must correct one of your unspoken assumptions, Princess Asuna," the demon girl said quietly. "You yourself may not make this journey."

"... I'm sorry, what?"

"The white magic of Mars, which you embody, and the black magic of Venus are antithetical to each other," Zazie explained in a cold, dispassionate tone. "If you travel there, your presence will be instantly recognized by countless watchers, possibly including those who now hold my sister in durance vile. That is without even considering the political aspects of your journey there, which would be seen as an invasion to be answered with violence." She shook her head once.

"Can I ask something?" Anya finally spoke again, rubbing her forehead and frowning.

"Be brief," Zazie answered shortly, eyes not moving off Asuna's stunned face.

"Gee, thanks. Is it really so important to keep up that project thing, now that we've rescued Asuna?"

Now Zazie did take her eyes off Asuna, and glared at Anya. "What is this 'we' of whom you speak?"

Anya stubbornly held up her card. Zazie did not relent.

"Anya," Negi interjected. "In order to prevent a time paradox, we still have to do all the research and building that will create the circumstances by which Asuna can be saved again. Besides which, whether she's motivated by sentiment or not, I cannot stand by while bad things are happening to my students, and the loss of a family member is just one such bad thing. Zazie, are you _sure_ that there's no way to hide Asuna's abilities if she travels to the Demon World?"

"I know of none such ... but I must admit that my knowledge of such matters is largely theoretical," Zazie confessed. "We would perhaps be better to seek advice from -"

"Nope, the fool will have to stay," Evangeline interrupted as she strolled in through the dorm doorway, Chachamaru close on her heels.

"Okay, we have to start locking that door!" Asuna declared.

"Bah!" declared the tiny mistress of puppets. "Do you truly imagine that locks would stop me? I am disappointed as your mentor of evil!"

"And I am wearing only a towel, so could you please knock before entering?"

"Mentor. Of. _Evil_ ," Evangeline repeated. "Ahem. In any event, no, there is no magic that would camouflage your nature as the carrier of Magic Cancel now that you've woken up to it. The best that we might be able to manage would be to revert you to childhood again, so it was concealed, and even that we could only do if you were cooperating."

"But -" Asuna started to object.

"This is the test for you two. In the world where the girl never came back, boya, you would still have to face this challenge without her. Even when she is present, there will be times and places in this world where you will not always have your ideal choice of allies with you. How will you deal with that when it happens?" she asked, abruptly utterly serious.

Negi took a deep breath, and gripped Akira's hand. "With the help of those whom I do have with me," he answered.

Akira nodded beside him.

"Good answer in theory," allowed the vampire. "We'll see how well that works out in practice. I will also lend you Chachamaru for this expedition. Well, I say that, but I doubt that I could stop her from going if I wanted to." Then Evangeline sighed, sounding weary. "And one thing more will I do for you."

Now she turned to look at Zazie. "Demon princess," she said. "How much time have you spent in the wilderlands of Hell?"

"We don't call it that, of course," replied Zazie. "But I will admit that I have not done much more than camp in safe regions controlled by my family."

"I thought not," Evangeline said, then snorted. "No wonder you and the boy get along so well! Rushing off like this ..." She trailed off, shaking her head with weary amusement. When she spoke again, though, there was no humor in her tone. "I know a person who spent ... a very long time as a traveler in Hell, seeking something that she never found. She would be an excellent guide for this expedition, even if the specifics of that place have likely changed since she returned to the world."

"Well, then, I suppose that I'd welcome your friend -"

"She's not my friend," Evangeline interrupted sharply.

"But ... then, will she agree?" Akira asked, confused.

"Let's find out," said Evangeline, and produced a cell phone from her dress pocket. She flipped it open and began pressing buttons. Then some more pressing buttons. And then, as she focused all of her attention and quite a bit of obvious annoyance on the phone, all of the buttons.

Eventually, Evangeline made a noise and handed the phone to Chachamaru. "Dial her number," she snapped.

Chachamaru obediently and silently did so, handing it back to her mistress when it began to ring. There was an audible click which told them all that the phone had been picked up.

"Karin," Evangeline said. "I need you."

Another audible click.

"She'll be here by the end of the day," Evangeline declared.

"Wait, she didn't say anything," Asuna objected. "How can you know that she'll -"

"Same reason you could know that Iinchou would agree to the plan you proposed to her when you said it was for the boya," Evangeline replied without meeting Asuna's eyes.

"Oh," Asuna said. Then, somewhat more surprised sounding, "Oh! Ohhhhhhh."

"Fascinating though these diversions into absurdly personal matters might be ..." Zazie interjected calmly.

"You're being sarcastic, now, aren't you?" asked Akira.

"... correct. Ahem. Let us now return to the questions of who should accompany yourself, myself and Negi on this expedition. I believe that taking Konoka-san and Setsuna-san on this expedition would be foolish."

Negi frowned. "I'm sorry, I can't possibly agree with that. Konoka's healing abilities are critical, and it would be cruel to bring her without Setsuna-san as well, even if Setsuna-san wasn't one of our finest -"

"The White Wings," Zazie interjected firmly.

Negi stopped short.

"You named your alliance after them, in an echo of that alliance which your father established," she continued. "It was a noble choice, and I respect it. But all choices have consequences, and one of the consequences of this one is that Setsuna-san and her wings are now inextricably linked to the alliance. If she is sighted in the Demon World, those who sight her will assume that your entire army is present and react accordingly."

"Wouldn't they make that same assumption about _me_?" he protested.

"No. You have been traveling on your own very often, of late," Zazie reminded him. "If a swordswoman of the God's Cry school is to be desired, however, there is another option."

Negi blanched for a moment. "Her?" he asked.

Zazie nodded. "Yes. Kuznoha-sensei will at least listen to our request, and she may wish to get away from the campus which has recently seen her embarrassment by -"

"Oh," Negi gasped. "That's ... yes, I'm fairly sure that won't work, she doesn't have the patience to go along with something like this, but there's yet another one here on campus. And while recruiting her will be difficult, I think we can do it," he concluded, smiling warmly.

"... where'd the confidence come from, boya?" Evangeline asked, frowning.

"I'm not sure, I just feel like I've accomplished something significant without even realizing it. Anyway, let's move on."

* * *

On the whole, Tsukuyomi believed that being alone with one's fury was significantly less pleasant than being alone with one's boredom, particularly when the fury had no real outlet. She didn't have her swords, of course, and she wasn't quite maddened enough to start attacking the walls and metal furnishings of her cell with her bare hands. Yet. And shrieking her outrage had grown tiresome once her throat had dried up and no water was present to lubricate it. So she sat and she fumed.

And then she heard the door opening in the distance, and _that gait_ , accompanied by others. Repressing her howl of frustration, she stayed seated and stared coldly at the cell door.

"This was _not_ my idea," said Setsuna as she stood there for a moment, before stepping back and allowing that Kuznoha bitch to step into view.

"Matsudaira Airi, alias Tsukuyomi," the older swordswoman declaimed - acting as though knowledge of the name Tsukuyomi had left behind long ago actually meant something. "You have committed serious crimes against the Shinmeiryuu School of Swordplay, and a judgement has been rendered against you."

Tsukuyomi yawned.

"For your crime of stealing the Hina Blade, you are sentenced to be permanently banned from the practice of the disciplines of the Shinmeiryuu School for the remainder of your life -"

Now she almost laughed at the absurdity of what was being said. Even if they did some sort of mental trickery to make her forget what she knew, her body would remember. The only way to prevent her from using the sword was -

"- and to have your right arm removed at the elbow, cursed to prevent restoration."

That brought her up short. It wouldn't be impossible to find a way to undo that curse and then get her arm fixed with magic, but it would be difficult beyond anything she'd done to this point, and expensive well beyond her means. Genuine fear raced through her. They were serious. But the fact that they were saying that they were going to do this instead of just doing it had to mean something. You showed the tools of torture well before you expected to use them.

"However," Touko continued after a moment, confirming Tsukuyomi's suspicions. "In light of the defendant's youth and other mitigating factors, the elders of the School are prepared to offer you a suspension of that sentence and release on your own recognizance, conditional on your continued good behavior ... and the performance of a specific task."

Tsukuyomi fought the urge to smile. There was a mission. Of course there was.

And then Kuznoha stepped back, and that wonderful Negi person stepped into view, not smiling, not cheerful. "Tsukuyomi-san," he said, by way of greeting.

"Negi-kun," she greeted him back. He had won points for not using her supposed 'real' name.

"I believe that you've stated that all you desire is the opportunity to test yourself against strong opponents. Have you ever been to the Demon World?"

And now, at last, she smiled. "When do we leave?" she asked.

 **To Be Continued**


	3. Chapter 3

**Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey II:  
A Complicated Bloodline  
Chapter 3**

"So, then, was Anya _not_ one of your ancestors, after all?" Asuna asked, mildly befuddled.

"I didn't say that," Kozue replied. "What I said was that she and Negi didn't have a sexual encounter then. The circumstances can change everything, which is why, in a world where Negi ultimately went back to Wales in a sad defeat and eventually married Anya, you get Chao Linsheng, and in this world where none of that happened, you get me, and in still another where things were different yet again, you get ... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Where was I again?"

Asuna looked less than satisfied with that reply, but she answered the question with patience all the same. "Someone called Karin was coming to Mahora."

"Oh yes. She's still around, by the way, though she didn't come to this party. It might be better to call on her so that _she_ could tell this part, more accurately than I could."

"No delays, please."

"Pushy child!" There was more humor than complaint in the exclamation. "Very well."

* * *

The ground shook with the sound of the impact. Misora, who had just settled down to pray for the evening, lifted her head and stared at her room's window, darkened now with earth thrown up rather than the night. Before she could even think about it, she was running with the intent of going towards the impact site.

 _Wait,_ thought her conscious mind, currently not in control of her feet. _I'm going where? Shouldn't I be going in the other direction?_ Any _other direction?_

It was no good, though. During her trip to the magical world, something had woken up in her, a flame that her recent experiences - both in talking with Asuna and _other_ conversation - had continued to fan. And now, when she perceived danger, more often than not she found herself running towards it to see if she could help, her coward heart protesting all the way and to no avail.

The source of the noise appeared to be a small impact crater in the church's empty parking lot. There wasn't really enough time for Misora to get a good look at the crater, as she was distracted by the sight of the girl in ragged clothing walking away from it.

"Kugimiya?" Misora gasped, horrified.

The girl noticed her, and spoke, sounding nothing like Misora's classmate. "I'm sorry, what?" Not only were their voices different, but this girl spoke Japanese with a faint but unfamiliar accent. Other differences in their appearances became apparent at second and later glances.

"Um, no, sorry, I got you mixed up with - never mind that now! Are you all right, did that, that, whatever _that_ was hit you or something?" she asked.

The girl looked back at the crater, then back to Misora with a bland expression. "You could say that it did. However, as you can see, I am quite all right. Perhaps a miracle occurred."

"All right except for your clothes," Misora replied, genuinely disturbed by this girl's 'no big deal' attitude.

Now the girl looked down. "Indeed," she said, considering her rent garment. "It would seem the miracle did not preserve them."

"Well, come on, I'll get you some spare robes," sighed Misora, beckoning towards the church.

The girl's head snapped up, and there was something very strange in her eyes. "That's very generous ... we haven't even been introduced."

"Doesn't matter. 'For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me.'" Misora repeated her beckoning gesture.

When the girl spoke, taking a step towards her, her voice was soft and somehow fragile. "'And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' The very least," she concluded. "My name is Yuuki Karin."

 _Bold Beautiful,_ thought Misora, resisting the impulse to chuckle. "Pleased to meet you. Now can we please get some clothes on you? Weird stuff has been happening around here lately!"

Karin nodded, and followed along. _What a nice girl,_ she thought, hoping that neither this one nor any other innocents would get caught up in her killing of Negi Springfield.

* * *

"So that's the situation," Negi concluded, making his last marks on the dry erase board he'd somehow dragged into the dorm room. "We have to travel to the Demon World, or Hell as it is colloquially known, in order to determine Poyo's circumstances and, if necessary, rescue her. Chachamaru and Zazie will be coming, as will Akira, of course. And I hope that each of you will also agree to join this expedition, despite the danger -"

"Are you nuts?" Kotaro asked, eyes wide.

"... I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question, Kotaro-kun," Negi replied, turning to regard him curiously.

"Yeah, damn straight I'm joining!" Kotaro continued as if his question hadn't even been answered, more or less confirming its rhetorical nature. He was grinning now, fangs clearly in evidence. "I know you an' me been on the outs lately, but this makes up for _everything_ , man! The chance to have a knock-down, drag-out, anything-goes, outright brawl with all of demon-dom on their own freaking turf? It's the best gift a guy ever gave his rival! I love you, man! In a totally utterly manly way, of course," he added quickly.

"Well, um, I suppose that I should say thank you for your ... utterly manly feelings, Kotaro-kun, first of all," Negi replied a bit awkwardly. "And I would certainly welcome your thanks for that opportunity, except that ... well ... you're really only invited for Natsumi-san's sake."

"... I'm what?" Kotaro whimpered.

"He's what?" asked Natsumi, seated beside Kotaro on the couch.

"While I'm sure that we won't be able to avoid every fight through the use of Natsumi-san's invisibility aura - and for those we can't, your skills will be critical, Kotaro-kun! - but the focus of our efforts is going to be operating with stealth, not seeking out brawls. I hope you understand."

"My god," whispered Kotaro. "It's all come true. I really _am_ that kid who hangs around with Natsumi! Forget the badass martial artist, forget the supernatural powers, forget the gainful employment, forget the adequate lover -"

"Oh, you're much better than adequate!" Madoka helpfully informed him from where she was sitting on a throw rug with Misa. She then flinched under the death-glare of Natsumi.

Negi decided to ignore this. "Well, Natsumi-san?"

"Well, let me see," said Natsumi, considering carefully. "If I say no, will you really be in a lurch, Negi?"

"It will be difficult to replace your abilities, but I'll find a way to do so," he admitted. "Because I'm not taking you into another crazy situation you never expected, without your permission."

"Uh-huh," she said, noncommittally. "And if I say no, will that mean that a certain someone doesn't even get to fight whichever demons we can't avoid through my invisibility?"

Kotaro had gone very pale and was staring at Natsumi, hands clutched in front of his face in a prayerful manner and whimpering some more.

"That would be right," Negi said, continuing to ignore this.

Natsumi turned to look patiently at Kotaro, who continued to silently beg. Without comment, she lifted one of her feet into her reach, pulled off her sock, and then extended the unsocked foot out parallel to the floor. Then coughed politely.

With a barely a moment's pause, Kotaro dropped to the floor and began giving her a foot massage.

"We'll do it," she said after a pleasant sigh.

"Ohhhkay," said Negi, continue to ignore the domination of his so-called rival on the grounds that, like Kotaro had just said, they were sort of on the outs at the moment. He turned to look at Madoka and Misa. "Everything that I just said about finding alternatives if you don't want to come applies to you as well," he said. "Especially since neither of you have ever gone into a dangerous situation voluntarily before."

"You've never been to our training camps," Misa told him wryly.

"True dat," agreed Madoka. "But Negi, why us in particular?"

"Essentially, the two of you are going to be taking the role that Konoka usually takes, in the support mage position. Misa's cheers allow her to revitalize the magical energy of those who hear them, which is going to be critical over this journey. Madoka's cheers, on the other hand, give a boost to the abilities of allies, enabling them to fight better and hopefully avoid injury that way. In combination with my own minor abilities in magical healing, your powers should allow us to fight, on those occasions when we have to, without fear of crippling injuries, just as we can when Konoka is watching over us. Probably," he added.

"Probably," Misa and Madoka chorused, exchanging glances.

"I will do what I can to find alternatives, and we don't have to do anything if you don't - oh, good grief, now I'm saying it even when it doesn't make any sense," Negi groaned.

"We'll do it," Misa rushed to reassure him. "It gets us out of class, lets us have a little action, wild romance on alien planets, what's not to like?"

"Definitely," agreed Madoka, having glanced briefly at Kotaro's on-going massage of Natsumi's feet when Misa mentioned 'wild romance'. "But I do wonder why Sakurako's not coming along."

"While her luck augmenting powers would be incredibly helpful, and there are indications that there would be a synergistic effect if all three of you were to use your cheers at the same time, it's important to remember that she has a pact with Fate, not me. In order for her abilities to keep working -"

"She should stay here," Madoka and Misa chorused, nodding rapidly.

Negi refrained from smiling. "Mm-hm. I thought you'd say so." With that, he turned to look at the last guest in the room, seated on a cushion she'd brought from her own room.

"Please don't say that I don't have to come with you if I don't want to," said Nodoka. "You know very well that I _do_ want to, and always will."

He felt incredibly uncomfortable as she regarded him calmly.

"Besides," she said, turning to look at Zazie. "I think everyone in the class owes you a debt for your help during the sports festival. This is the least I can do, considering."

"... what help was that?" Negi asked, suddenly suspicious.

"It's useless to dwell on the past," Zazie said placidly.

"Za-"

"Besides, almost all the girls in the class were united in that. Why would I have chosen to be different?" she asked, spreading her hands and looking innocently at the ceiling.

Negi let out an annoyed sigh.

"I do wonder why Yue _isn't_ part of this expedition," Nodoka interjected to change the subject.

"Two reasons," he told her.

"One of which being that any information she might have about the demon world in her book is already known to me," Zazie informed her gently. "In years to come, I suspect that will not be true, that she will learn more about it than I can imagine knowing, but for right now, I am her equal if not her superior in this area."

"And the other ... well, that has to do with the other urgent news I've received today, from the Headmaster. He's received a notice from Ariadne that they're sending a small party to inspect the World Tree and confirm that all is well with it. It wasn't framed as a request to do that, either. They are coming, and matters being what they are -"

"Yue's team is coming to visit," Nodoka finished for him. "I see. She'll need to be here to greet them, and if they found out that she was gone ... they'd probably come looking for her and mess things up."

"To say the least," Negi agreed. "So. This is our army, once Master's guide arrives here, and we let Tsukuyomi-san out of her cell." _Please, let it be enough. I'm risking too much already._

* * *

"Well, it's a good thing that old school uniform we found fits you," Misora said, hurrying to keep up with Karin's much more brisk walking pace. "I just hope that no one asks you for a student ID or anything."

"Fret not," Karin assured her without a glance in Misora's direction. "Should that transpire, this other gift will answer nicely." With that, she reached back to almost caress the shaft of the long hammer strapped to her back. "I would prefer to have a sword as well, but I suppose it's a bit ridiculous for a church to have a supply of those in this peaceful place and time."

"Yeah about that!" Misora half-shrieked as visions of this girl going completely nuts with a hammer danced through her head. "Um -"

"I will not forget your charity," Karin assured her.

"Great, great, but could you maybe also remember - out-loud, like - the reasons you came here and why you need that hammer so badly?"

Now Karin did turn to look at her, a somewhat puzzled expression on her face, before answering without pausing in her stride across the campus. "Well, I suppose that there's no harm in telling you. I was invited here by an individual whom I have known for some time, who has been ... detained here somewhat against her will." She nodded to herself. Surely the innocent nun would assume that she was talking about another girl who had been sent to this school by parents disregarding the girl's wishes.

"You mean Evangeline, right?" asked the decidedly-less-than-innocent nun.

Karin came to a halt. Had she been another sort of character, she might have momentarily collapsed face first to the ground. All that her dignity would allow her to do, however, was to take the moment that she would have spent rising up to pause and turn to glare slightly at Misora. "You are familiar with her, I take it?" she asked coldly.

"We're in the same class," Misora explained _very_ quickly. "And, I mean, I've heard stories about her, so I know some of the details, but we've never sat down and talked about the whole 'cursed to attend school' thing, and really I'm almost as scared of her as I am of ... well, you get the idea? Right?"

"I see. Ahem. Yes. Evangeline-sama asked me to come here. And given the givens, there can only be one reason that she would do so. Thus, I must prepare myself for battle against her enemy." She patted the head of the hammer to emphasize her point.

"Her ... enemy?" Misora asked.

"Of course," Karin said sternly. "I speak here of Negi Springfield, the recently famous son of her hated captor. His continued existence demonstrates that she has been unable to take from him that essence which would allow her to roam free, and, doubtless after many, many unsuccessful attempts to defeat him by the tinkertoy she was persuaded to employ as a pactio partner, she has finally reached the conclusion that she must call for more competent aid in doing so. Thus, I arranged for myself to be shot here in a cannon from Korea."

Misora had been staring at Karin as she explained all this, eyes wide and mouth agape.

"Was there something you wished to ask?"

"North or South?" Misora managed to squeak out.

Karin blinked. "North or South what?"

"K-K-Korea, I mean, where did you start -"

"Excuse me?" she asked. Then realization settled on her features. "Oh, yes, now that you mention it, that country has been recently divided, hasn't it? I don't pay much attention to politics. The monastery where I was dwelling was in the south of the peninsula, however."

"Oh good," Misora said weakly. "Well, no, not good, but ... um, no, look, maybe you should actually _ask_ Evangeline whether she wants you to fight Negi-kun."

Karin stared at her. "I would much prefer to present her with a fait accompli."

"Yeah, but what I'm trying to suggest is that a beat-up Negi-kun is not the fait she wants you to accompli! She's kind of fond of him in her own weird way, you know?"

And then Karin's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?" she said icily.

Misora visibly panicked. "Okay, I tried!" she shouted at no one in particular. "Adeat!"

* * *

Negi wasn't entirely sure what had happened. All that he had meant to do was to reassure the girls that even though the danger was great, and he was weaker than he had been, he would still do everything in his power to make sure that they all made it home all right. And then, while Kotaro was giving him a disgusted look, all of the girls - even Akira! - had exchanged the strangest smile with each other, and then, as one, they had assured him that they knew he would take care of them. Which was what he'd meant, but wasn't quite what he'd said, and he had been about to point that out ...

... and then things became a little confusing.

Now, of course, they were completely understandable. He was naked and flat on his back on the dorm room floor with an equally naked Nodoka mounted firmly on his face, her vulva and clitoris held tightly against his mouth. Down below Madoka and Misa were giving him a tag-team blowjob, one licking the sides of his phallus and the other taking the head into her mouth, then switching over with much loud sloppy kissing in between. Understandably, he couldn't see exactly who was doing what, but he supposed that the details were perhaps not all that important.

In one direction, he could vaguely see a still half-dressed Natsumi lying back on the couch with her legs held high and spread, letting out sighs and squeals of ecstasy. He suspected that Kotaro had moved from giving her a foot massage to giving her a massage with all eleven fingers in another area.

"Ah!" Natsumi cried. "Yes, lick me there!"

Yep, all eleven fingers.

In the other direction, he could even more vaguely see Akira semi-clad and sitting on one of the chairs with Zazie's arms coming around her waist to caress and pinch at her breasts and down below - or so he assumed, since that was well out of his line of sight. Considering this, Negi found himself feeling unusual jealousy and anxiety, and hoping that Zazie would not use that odd talent of hers on Akira. Which was ridiculous, of course, since if Akira was generous enough to let him ... do all this ... then he should surely be generous in return and let her do anything she liked. But he found himself hoping that she would not like Zazie's talent.

At least such strange thoughts no longer made his head hurt. That was nice.

"Let me," he heard Nodoka saying as she bent forward along the length of his body. "Let me."

The warmth surrounding his hardness pulled back, to be replaced by another warmth.

"Wow," Misa said softly. "Bookstore's got some skills."

The warmth seemed to be moving lower on him.

"Is she going to -" asked Madoka.

Lower, and lower ... and then a pause, and a sudden retreat, and he could hear Nodoka gasping and coughing. And perhaps the word, "Dammit", mixed in with those noises.

"Hey, no, it's okay, that takes practice," Misa assured her. "You're so brave, trying to take it all like that! We'll help, right, Madochii?"

"... I really hate that name."

"Of course right. It's just gonna take some practice, that's all. And you can do practice, right bookstore? Sexy bookstore." And in the distance, there was some different sloppy kissing noises.

* * *

"There's just one thing I don't understand," said Asuna, looking across the table at Evangeline rather curiously.

"I already did the 'more than that' bit, didn't I?" Evangeline asked, reflectively.

"Yeah, you did that a while ago," Asuna agreed.

"Probably a few times, actually," Chisame mused without looking up from the menu she was reading.

"I believe that Master is specifically making reference to a time she did that particular 'bit' in response to something Asuna-san said," observed Chachamaru.

"It's a perfectly good bit, I have no problems doing it again," said Eva, and opened her mouth to do just that.

"No, no thank you, no need to do the bit," interjected Asuna. "Anyway, this thing I don't understand -"

"That's your part of the bit!" protested Evangeline.

"- you like girls, right?" the princess continued as though nothing had been said. "I mean, sexually."

Now Chisame lowered the menu and gazed at Evangeline, as did Chachamaru. As it happened, one of the things that Asuna did not understand was that Evangeline's actual sexual preference was to have her head patted and occasionally be held while sleeping. Of the four persons presently gathered around the cafe table, only three were aware of this.

"In as much as I can be said to like anything, sexually, yes, that is true," Evangeline ground out.

Asuna had gained many talents in the last little while. An understanding of subtext was not one of them. "Well, then, what is the big deal between you and this Karin person. If she's in love with you, why not just jump her bones?"

"There are many good and logical reasons for me to avoid doing that, the primary one being that she doesn't want to have her bones jumped," Evangeline answered. "She has something of a madonna-whore complex, which is hilarious, given the givens. Basically, I don't think she so much loves me in that sense as she wants someone to worship and validate her existence, which - which I can't believe I've gotten to the point of discussing with you people!" she abruptly cried, facepalming. "What's wrong with me these days?"

Before anyone could answer that, Misora ran past at hyperspeed, shrieking in panic.

After a moment of consideration, Chachamaru spoke up. "I believe that it is a sign of growing acceptance of your circumstances, Master, and a general indication of maturity. Much like Chisame's lack of reaction to Misora-san's actions, just now."

Chisame made a strangled noise.

Before the discussion could go any further, however, a young woman who bore a remarkable first-glance resemblance to Madoka ran past at a very impressive velocity that wasn't quite hyperspeed ... and slowed to a halt as she turned to gaze at Chachamaru. "Oh," she said, obviously disgusted. "It's you."

Chachamaru politely nodded. "Greetings, Karin-san," she said in a tone which no one who didn't know her well would have recognized as unusually cold.

"Where is she?" Karin asked rudely.

Chisame, who had already blinked in surprise at Chachamaru's cold tone, now looked around in confusion. The number of people seated around the table had abruptly diminished by one.

"I would not care to guess and thus inform you incorrectly," Chachamaru replied. "Perhaps if you were to join us -"

"I do not take tea with the enemy," Karin snapped. "Also, I am busy."

"Busy chasing Misora?" Chisame interjected. "There's a lost cause. What'd you do to her to send her off like that? And -"

"I do not know what Kasuga-san's problem is. We were speaking in perfect amity until she abruptly panicked and ran off. I was chasing her to attempt to determine what the matter was. _Not that it is any of your business._ "

Chisame bristled in response to that, but Karin ignored her in favor of turning back to Chachamaru. "Your associate is correct, however, that doing so is clearly futile, and so I will return to my previous objective. Tell Evangeline-sama, when next you see her, that I will happily deal with her problem once I locate Springfield."

Asuna spoke up. "He's in room 643 of the middle school girl's dormitory."

Karin's head snapped in Asuna's direction. "What? What is a boy doing in a girls' - no, ridiculous question, he must be engaged in some manner of lewd act! Good day," she said, and dashed off in the general direction of the dorms.

"You're welcome," Asuna called after her. And, more quietly, she said, "And you're welcome too!"

"I haven't thanked you yet," said the small person hiding behind her.

Chisame's frown deepened as she turned away from a glance in the direction of Evangeline's place of concealment to Karin's retreating form, which was by that point quite some distance away. "Wait a minute," she said at last. "Didn't you tell me that she was just told that Evangeline needed her help?"

"Yes, that was what Master, who doubtless has a good tactical reason for hiding behind Asuna-san, said to her," replied Chachamaru.

"So, then, Negi's name didn't actually come into it?" Chisame pressed. "Then how come she knows that she has to seek out -"

"Oh, no," Evangeline groaned, facepalming again as she seemed to fold out from behind Asuna.

"Let me guess, she wants to beat Negi up for his and his dad's crimes against you." Asuna asked wearily.

"Not exactly," said Evangeline, still hiding her face. "More like, kill him to avenge my honor. You've got all the rest right, though."

Asuna gaped. "Wow," she said. "And just think, we could have avoided all that if you'd only explained everything when _she was just here_!"

"Oh get over it, girl who gave out his apartment number."

Someone else who _was just here_ was Chachamaru, who had rapidly departed on hearing the word 'kill', jets flaring behind her as she took to the sky on a heading more or less identical to that of Karin. "Fear not, Negi-sensei! Your assistant will protect you!" drifted down out of the sky.

"Well, you're going to want to stop doing that and get dressed, dumbass. I don't know, sneeze backwards again or something! No, probably not, but do it anyway!" Chisame vocalized as she held her card up to her forehead. Technically, she could have engaged in completely inaudible telepathy, but she had never quite managed the knack of that.

* * *

Negi had chosen Chisame as his advisor with a great deal of consideration, and so he naturally decided to follow her advice. However, it was immediately apparent that 'reverse sneeze dress-up' was one of his talents which had disappeared forever once he abandoned Magia Erebea, along with that whole 'absorbing a spell and turning it into armor' thing. He therefore settled for announcing that the party was over and urging everyone to get dressed in a hurry, while doing so himself.

He was just beginning to pull up his trousers when the sound of the dorm room door being smashed open reached his ears. Despite the peril he was in, he sighed in annoyance. Eventually, they were going to have to get the whole structure of the door replaced, and he was fairly sure that the dormitory's insurance didn't cover 'breakage by superhuman entity'.

Such thoughts vanished when a young woman in a Mahora school uniform who bore a marked resemblance to Madoka, carrying a hammer, strode through the entry hallway into plain sight. "I knew it!" she declared as soon as she saw Negi in his still not quite dressed state, to say nothing of the equally semi-clad forms of the young women (and young man) behind him.

"Hello, you must be Karin-san," Negi said politely. "I'm sorry, but you've caught me at a somewhat awkward moment."

Whatever outraged response she was about to make out was drowned out by the sudden gasp from Misa. "Wait, Madoka?! But how can you be over there when you're over here?" she cried out, glancing from the young woman who'd just entered the room to the one who was crouched at her side, pulling a shirt on over her bra.

"That's obviously not me, Misa!" said Madoka, annoyed. "We don't even look that much alike!"

"The heck you don't! And how can I be sure she's not the real Madoka, and you're the imposter?"

Madoka just stared at her.

Karin just stared at the lot of them. "Insanity," she finally declared. "I have stumbled onto a nest of insanity. That's the only reasonable explanation. This must be your doing, Negi Springfield! You have perverted and corrupted the minds of these girls, but all that is at an end! Face judgment eternal, Negi Springfield!" She hefted up her hammer.

"There's really been a huge misunderstanding, here," said Negi, then dodged back out of the way of the first swing. "It's actually getting bigger every moment."

"Halt, Yuuki Karin!" demanded Chachamaru as she burst in through the shattered doorway, weapons at ready. "You shall not be permitted to harm Negi Springfield!"

"Oh, boy," muttered Kotaro, who'd gotten dressed snappily. "This is going to go south so fast."

"What nonsense is this, android?" Karin snapped, whirling so that she had a view of both Chachamaru and Negi. "You claim to be Evangeline-sama's servant, and yet you would protect her enemy?"

"Negi-sensei is not the Master's enemy," Chachamaru retorted. "He is ... he is her love, just as he is mine!"

Absolute silence ensued.

Slowly, Karin's gaze turned away from Chachamaru to regard Negi with unspeakable loathing. "Your suffering will be legendary," she promised him.

"Oh, come now, this is -" Negi started to wearily protest.

And then Akira stood up. "Enough," she said. Very calmly, she walked between Karin and Negi, spread her arms as wide as they could go, and stared right at Karin. "He is my love, too. If you would harm him, you must go through me first."

Karin blinked. "What in God's name -"

Madoka and Misa exchanged a glance, and then, as one, they got up to stand right behind Akira. "Love ... is a strong word," said Madoka.

"But you're going to have to go through us, too, if you want to hurt Negi-kun, Madoka," said Misa.

Madoka's teeth ground together audibly. "That's not me," she repeated irritably.

"So you say."

Zazie, silent as darkness, drifted in behind the two of them, gazing at Karin with a challenging look in her eyes.

Karin stood there for a moment, staring at the human wall separating herself from her target, then turned to glance over her shoulder at Chachamaru and her weapon systems. With an annoyed sigh, she lowered the head of her hammer to the floor. "Insanity," she muttered.

"I can't really argue with that," said Negi, embarrassed by these developments. "But in any event, would you like to know why Evangeline-san actually asked you to come here?"

"Oh, by all means," Karin said sulkily.

* * *

Asuna was somewhat surprised to see that the dorm building was still standing when she, Chisame and Eva arrived there, but the absence of large explosions in the distance as they'd walked towards it had sort of prepared her for the notion that it might be. (On the other hand, she knew exactly nothing about this girl who had a crush on Evangeline and looked sort of like Madoka, and the possibility that she might have some sort of silent destruction powers could not be denied, so it was still a little surprising.) There didn't even seem to be any large holes in the building though which someone might have been knocked by a hammer blow.

"Well, everything looks just fine, and so I guess we can ohhh dear, I just remembered that I left the oven on back at my cabin and must dash," Evangeline said as they reached the doorway, and started to turn to walk away.

"Okay, that would be a lot more convincing if I didn't know that Chachamaru does all the cooking and cleaning at your place," replied Asuna, tapping Eva's head with a finger and by subtle pressure turning her back towards the dorm entryway.

"Maybe _she_ left it on?"

"And _that_ would be a lot more convincing if I didn't know Chachamaru period!" Asuna exclaimed. "You're being an embarrassment as my master of evil!"

"Maybe we should go in and see if crazy lady has some sort of stealthy killing powers?" Chisame suggested, reminding Asuna yet again that they were more similar than they were different.

"She doesn't have any -" Evangeline started to snap, then stopped herself, sighed, and added, "Fine, let's go in. Why not?"

* * *

"One of these days we're going to have to replace the whole darn doorway," Asuna sighed as the three of them walked in to the suite.

"... and then, once we have secured our objective, we hope to return home safely, through the same means," Negi finished explaining as they arrived to find Karin seated on the couch and all the other members of the Negi Party Hell Edition (Negipa Hed, for short) more or less surrounding her. Chachamaru's weapons were still out. Nodoka stood right behind Karin with a glowing book hovering in front of her.

"Things seem to have worked themselves out, then, in which case I should really be -" Evangeline started to say in a nasal tone that sounded nothing like her regular voice.

Karin's head jerked in her direction. "Evangeline-sama?" she asked.

The characters for _Dammit_ hovered momentarily over Evangeline's head as she realized the futility of trying to hide behind Asuna again. "Hello, Karin. It's been quite some time, hasn't it?"

"It has been fourteen years, five months, and seven days since we last met," Karin agreed, genuflecting before her.

"Sounds about right," Evangeline mused while facepalming.

"And ... the reason you called me," Karin inquired without looking up. "Is it truly the mission this ... person ... has described?"

"Yeah, that is the reason." Eva managed to actually look down at Karin. "What do you think of the boya's plan?"

"It is an absurdity, Evangeline-sama. It is critically deficient when it comes to identifying the parties responsible for the disappearance it is meant to investigate, and relies on the abilities of a group of magically empowered school girls and children rather than the seasoned adult warriors and mages who would stand a more reasonable chance of success." A slight pause. "If you instruct me to accompany them, I will depart whenever they are ready to do so."

"Well, goody for you," Misa interjected. "Who _are_ you, anyway?"

"My name is Yuuki Karin," replied Yuuki Karin.

"Her name is Ist Karin Haute," Nodoka corrected softly.

Asuna sounded out those syllables ... and then got very wide-eyed.

Karin looked at Nodoka in a decidedly unfriendly manner, then glanced at Asuna before continuing. "And I am the _second_ oldest person in this room - a rare experience - and have spent more than twelve centuries in the wilderlands of Hell. While that was some time ago, I doubt things have changed very much there."

"Well, great," Misa replied, less than impressed with this response. "So you're not as old as someone who looks like they're younger than you. Real accomplishment, that," she continued, deliberately not looking in the direction of a certain petite vampire.

"The subtlety with which you try to avoid provoking my wrath is truly breathtaking, Kakizaki," drawled Eva.

"Is this person truly necessary for the success of the endeavor, Evangeline-sama?" Karin asked quietly, looking at Misa in much the way a bird of prey might consider a field mouse.

Before Eva could answer that, Negi smoothly interjected. "Yes," he said firmly. "And not only that, but she is one of my precious students, and Evangeline's dear classmate as well."

A noise that might have been a swallowed laugh came from Evangeline's general direction.

"Very well," said Karin, continuing to regard Misa with a hunter's eye. "In any event, I was not speaking of Evangeline-sama, but of the Princess of Parallel Mars, who is more ancient than I am by far."

"The Princess of -" Misa started to repeat, sounding confused, but broke off midway. "Oh. Asuna. That cra- um, sorry. I don't like to think about that stuff, Asuna. None of it seems really all that real to me."

"I know the feeling," Asuna wryly agreed.

"Kakizaki, I'd hug you if you weren't a shallow nymphomaniac," Chisame told her with utmost sincerity.

"Hey!"

"Well, if you at least weren't shallow, I suppose none of us can complain about nymphomania any more."

"Rude, Hasegawa," Misa retorted.

"What do you mean by that?" Karin asked, eyebrows quivering.

Everyone froze.

"Oh. Her too?" the ancient girl guessed aloud after a moment of consideration. "What a depraved place. How unfortunate that that cad Nagi Springfield chose it as your prison, Evangeline-sama."

Negi bristled but kept silent as Evangeline coughed another restrained laugh. "I can't really argue with that," she said. "But it's not important right now."

"I suppose. As I was about to say after clarifying my earlier statement - Kakizaki, I think it was? - I cannot die. Neither arm nor claw nor spell can end my life. At the very least, with me as a guide, you are guaranteed that at some point, I will be able to return to this place and give an account of your likely painful demise."

"And as _I_ said before - yay for you," Misa retorted.

The corners of Karin's mouth curved slightly. "Heh. I like you. What a pity." She turned to look at Negi, business-like once more. "When do we leave?"

"Tomorrow morning," he answered. "That should give us time to complete all the necessary preparations."

"So be it. I shall await your call at Evangeline-sama's home, which is doubtless in need of a _proper_ cleaning." This said without a glance at Chachamaru, who momentarily pointed one of her larger weapons in Karin's direction, then moved it away with a pantomime exhalation.

* * *

Somewhat to her dissatisfaction, Tsukuyomi's prompt and polite agreement to the terms of her parole had not resulted in her immediate release. In as much as she could worry about things - for despite everything, her soul was a fundamentally tranquil place - she found herself somewhat concerned that someone, perhaps the Aoyamas, had thrown up roadblocks against her participation in the mission. It was a genuine concern up until the moment that she heard the cell door being unlocked, and squeaking its noisy way open.

Then Negi poked his head in the open door. "We're not leaving until tomorrow morning," he informed her without preamble. "But I thought you might appreciate a chance to get out, exercise, and sleep in a more comfortable place."

She controlled the urge to roll her eyes at the word 'exercise'. The rest of the offer did appeal, however, and -

 _... I'm getting stronger ... and you're not ..._

\- and perhaps some minor sword form practice would not be altogether unwelcome, either. "Thank you, Negi-kun, you remain a very generous soul," she said as she rose up and made her way towards the cell door.

In the small room on the other side, she was sort-of-but-not-really surprised to see Fate standing there waiting. A quip about his presence at Negi's side blossomed in her mind but died unspoken when she saw the third person there, the mind-reading member of Negi's band of comely comrades, standing as far away from Fate as was possible given the size of the room.

For the moment, she focused on noteworthy absences rather than presences. "Where's my dear senpai?" she asked patiently, not really expecting an answer.

"She's washed her hands of this entire affair following her last words to you," Negi explained patiently. "I hope you weren't expecting to have her as a sparring partner or anything like that."

"Alas. But you're right, my expectations are much more minimal than that," Tsukuyomi agreed. "Hello, Fate-kun. How is your love life treating you?"

Fate gazed at her in - dare she think it? - stony silence.

"And this must be ... um," she paused, feigning an attempt to remember the girl's name. While she had forgotten it, it had never really mattered to her and she didn't see any reason that this should change at the moment.

"Miyazaki Nodoka," the girl said, bowing just a tiny bit. "I'm volunteering my room for your dwelling this evening."

"My, you also have generous friends, Negi-kun," Tsukuyomi remarked.

"It seems the least I can do for my new bodyguard."

Now, that cried out for a response. "I'm your what now?" she asked pleasantly.

Negi coughed uncomfortably. "Yes, um, during the mission, while we expect you to defend the entire party in conjunction with our other fighters, you'll be specifically tasked with guarding Nodoka while the other fighters are partnered up with other non-combatant members of the expedition. The buddy system, you see."

"And I'll be tasked with guarding you," Nodoka said calmly, holding up her pactio card.

Now Tsukuyomi froze. "I see," she said quietly, for she did. She hadn't imagined that she would be going on this mission without some guarantees of her obedience, but this was far beyond the limits she'd expected of Negi and his associates. "That's not very ... what's the word? ... trusting, Negi-kun."

"I do trust you, Tsukyomi-san," he assured her. "Unfortunately, what I trust you to be is somewhat treacherous. So I'm taking a step to verify your trustworthiness."

"I see," she said again. She glanced at Fate, who still hadn't moved or made a noise through the entire conversation. "And are you going to be coming along with us as well, Fate-kun?"

"No. In fact, I'm here against Negi-kun's wishes," the artificial boy informed her.

"Really?" she said, glancing between the two of them. "A lack of trust appears to be somewhat endemic -"

"Tsukuyomi," he interrupted. "I believe that you can change."

She fell silent, gazing at him. "Really."

"I am not sure what you will change into, however. And so I have come to give you this simple warning. If you betray Negi-kun, and I am reluctantly forced to view any harm to his allies as a betrayal of him, then you should be aware that there is nowhere on any world that you will be able to hide from me." He looked at Negi, then. "I'm done." And he walked swiftly out the room's other exit.

"My my my," Tsukuyomi cooed, fascinated despite herself.

"We have a dartboard with his face on it in our room," said Nodoka. "Do you play?"

"... and the headache at last returns," Negi muttered, rubbing his head.

* * *

Somewhat later, as she sat on the front porch of a certain cabin and resented her enforced idleness - for in fact it had been beyond her to find even a speck of dust or hidden damage anywhere within the cabin, and so she had been unable to clean anything - Karin gazed up into the early evening sky and watched for the stars to come out until she remembered the concept of light pollution. When that happened, she sighed unhappily. The stars were the one thing that were like her, returning and returning and always the same ... or almost always, as those rotten Italians had demonstrated ...

A slight cough came from the darkness surrounding the cabin, and Karin instantly shifted to a stance in which she could be ready to defend Evangeline-sama's property. To her renewed annoyance, however, it was only the Princess of Parallel Mars, carrying - of all things! - a tea tray as she walked carefully up towards the cabin.

"I figured that Chachamaru wouldn't offer you any tea, so I thought you might like some of Konoka's, instead," the orange-haired girl said.

"Is she often that neglectful of guests?" Karin asked, doing her level best to hide how eager she was for the answer to be 'yes'.

"Nope, but you're kind of a jerk," the Princess replied.

Karin briefly considered the worth of wrath, and dismissed it as without value at the moment. "That has been observed," she admitted instead. "I would welcome the tea."

A few moments later, as the two sat together on the porch, sipping tea and staring up at the starless sky, Karin finally asked the question. "You wished to know something, correct?"

"Lots of things," Asuna admitted. "But when it comes to you, I guess there's really only one real question, isn't there?"

"Perhaps," Karin agreed. "I have only ever confessed this once. It resulted in my first meeting with Evangeline-sama. Perhaps a second time will change everything in my life again. Perhaps not." And then, with a deep breath, she began to speak in a language that only Asuna would recognize and understand.

* * *

I was born in Germania in the first year of the rule of Tiberius in Rome, or so I believe, for Rome was only a rumor to our people. I was not yet a woman when I began, unwillingly, the journeys that would take me away from my home forever - for my people would be destroyed in the great population shifts that came later in that century - and to the province of Judea, as a slave and later a freed woman.

Eventually, I met Him. Much like the historians, I divide my own history into the era before He came into my life, and the years afterwards. He accepted many outcasts among His friends and followers, and perhaps it should not be so strange that a foreigner, a woman, and a freed slave should number among them. Was I the disciple that He loved? I am not the one to say. I loved Him. We all did. Was I the only one who yearned for Him? I doubt it.

Did I betray Him? Yes. In the end, I did. In the end, hearing Him speak of the doom that was coming for Him made me panic and try to offer Him up to the authorities in the hope that if I did so, if He was taken peacefully, they would be merciful. I was, and perhaps am, a fool.

The worst part, I think, was the way that they wrote me out of the history altogether, and gave the Aramaic form of my name as a nickname to Judah bar Simon. For millennia, then, that poor, greedy man, whose worst crime was to steal off with our treasury when it seemed that all was truly lost, who bought a plot of land with that money and died of a seizure many years later, has been condemned as the worst traitor, the most shameful coward, in all of history. It seems hardly just.

But there is no justice in the world, I think, for why else should I be granted unending life for that act of treason and cowardice?

* * *

"I don't believe that there's no justice in the world," Asuna said, a little while after Karin had finished speaking.

"Time will tell if you or I am right," said Karin. "As I think you will fall before I do, I can say that I will have the final answer."

There was nothing really to say to that, so they both fell silent for a time.

"Please look after Negi," Asuna asked after a time passed. "I don't ... I think Evangeline loves someone else more than she loves him, no matter what Chachamaru might say, but he is dear to her, for all that she claims otherwise."

Karin closed her eyes.

"And you are dear to her, too," the wretched girl added. "Or she wouldn't trust you with him."

"I will do what I can," Karin promised softly. After a long moment, she spoke again. "Will you tell your friends about me?"

Asuna blinked, surprised. "Of course not. Confessions are supposed to be confidential, right? Besides, it wouldn't mean anything to any of them, except maybe Misora."

"Ah, so she is one of your classmates. I suspected ... wait, is she party to your perversions?" Karin asked sharply.

"Not exactly," Asuna replied, shading the truth a mite.

Karin regarded her dubiously, but didn't say anything. They sat there together until some of the stars actually managed to come out.

* * *

Somewhat to her amazement, Tsukuyomi discovered that they actually did have a dartboard with Fate's face on it in their room. Admittedly, it was a velcro dart board at which plastic sphere-headed darts with velcro strips were thrown, rather than one for the use of sharp projectiles, which no one was _trusting_ enough to hand her just yet. But the offer to let her join in on what the two girls clearly viewed as a symbolic attack on Fate was genuinely meant, which might have warmed her heart if she were at all capable of being heart warmed. As it was, she just politely thanked them for the offer, took a hold of one of the brooms with which they obviously kept their dormitory room so sparklingly clean, and engaged in some sword form practice on the far side of the room from the two of them.

Of course, all that happened was that she got tired and reminded of how much she was bored by and disliked sword form practice. This wasn't going to make her any stronger. She knew that. She'd known that since the very beginning. Nothing but the direct clash of blades with a peer or a superior would do that. Or of course a cheat, but the limits of such cheats had been made very clear to her. But if trickery wouldn't get her anywhere, and hard work (ugh!) wouldn't get her anywhere, and her sempai was so much better than her despite the fact that everything she did was as backwards as possible, then what was Tsukuyomi supposed to do?

She could not have the bonds that sempai had so ridiculously claimed as her strength. Even sempai had admitted that, in the conversation she'd had with Konoe right before her most recent capture. They were not for her. Even if they were a source of strength, she wouldn't want them if they were available to her, since ...

... and then her reason failed her.

Maybe if she convinced herself that it was just another trick?

Deceive even herself that way?

Weary, frustrated, and less serene than she'd ever been, Tsukuyomi finished her practice, darted into the dorm room's shower stall, and then exited, no less weary or frustrated but a bit more serene.

She'd expected to be sent to the couch to sleep, and was again surprised that her two hosts - or at least Miyazaki, who'd done all the talking while her partner just stared at Tsukuyomi in a cold, quite unfriendly manner - offered to allow her to have the upper bunk in their room to herself for the night, while they shared the last. _How generous._ she'd thought, since surely they would not be shameless enough to _do_ anything while she was in hearing range, even if she was assuming correctly about their relationship.

 _So much for that idea,_ Tsukuyomi thought bitterly a little while later as she listened to the vigorous shuffling of futon sheets and quiet steady gasps of pleasure coming from beneath her. How disgusting!

Why, it was almost as annoying as the very idea that -

"AH!" came the faint echo of a loud cry from somewhere not terribly far away. "YES, SETCHAN! JUST LIKE THAAAAAAAT!"

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

"YES! HOLY SHIT, SAKU, IS FATE TEACHING YOU THIIIS?!" sounded another echo.

Tsukuyomi covered her ears with her hands and prayed for the sweet release of death.

 **To Be Continued**


	4. Chapter 4

**Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey II:  
A Complicated Bloodline  
Chapter 4**

What Negi had hoped, in delaying their departure until the next morning, was that his companions would take that time to say all of their farewells the night before. That way, they could go through the portal as soon as possible, without any additional well-wishing and/or the possibility of last minute insistence that certain people should join the expedition. Such declarations, however well-meant, would slow them down when they had to move quickly.

"C'mon, Negi-kun!" Yuna pleaded with him. "You've gotta take me with you guys! I'm going crazy with nothing to shoot, here! And Donet-san is creeping me out with how stalkery she's gotten!"

"Gooooooo, Negiiipa Hed! Go go!" cheered Sakurako, having recruited a number of her classmates to serve as temporary cheerleaders in Misa and Madoka's absence.

"I am going to get you for this, Shiina!" Chisame shouted angrily as she whirled the pompoms over her head. "Somehow and in some way, you are going to pay!"

"Let us come too, Negiii!" cried the Narutaki twins, gazing up at him with teary eyes. "We want to be your cute and lovable sex ninjas!"

He really should have known better.

"An entire classroom of girls?" asked Karin, glaring disgustedly into Negi's back. "You debauched an entire classroom of girls?"

"Not ... entirely," Negi answered, gesturing vaguely in Misora's direction, which prompted Misora to try and hide behind Mana again. For her part, Mana just kept right on smiling cheerfully through this entire situation.

"You sybarite!" the immortal sneered. "Am I supposed to take the fact that you did not _succeed_ in corrupting a nun as being somehow virtuous on _your_ part?"

"Acolyte," he corrected reflexively.

Angered beyond words (briefly) Karin turned away from him. "And then there's this!" she spoke again as her gaze settled on Tsukuyomi, standing - unsteadily - near the center of the small army currently surrounded by the much larger 3-A army. "Do I understand rightly? This child has been recruited from some manner of _prison_ to accompany us?"

"Could you stop shouting, please, I didn't sleep well last night and am somewhat sensitive to loud noises," Tsukuyomi said wearily.

Nodoka, standing beside her, whistled innocently.

"Really, girls, we can't take any more of you with us," Negi tried saying to the group. "I'm sure that any and all of you would be helpful, but nevertheless -"

"Please!" cried the girls, whom he now saw included Makie.

"Go, Negipa Hed!" cried the cheerleaders, whom he was somewhat startled to realize included Satsuki, having a great time judging by the smile on her face.

"We've got to get going!" he told them, helplessly.

"Negi-sensei!" rang a new voice from not terribly far away. "I _challenge_ you!"

"Oh, for god's sake," he groaned, facepalming. He'd recognized the voice immediately, of course, but he still felt a certain gloom as he looked up to see that, no, he wasn't mistaken, it was Takane D. Goodman, in gym shirt and bloomers, standing tall and proud, long blonde hair blowing in the non-existent wind, pointing at him like some graven image of Nemesis. And behind her was Sakura Mei, in her uniform, staring at her mentor's back like some graven image of an unnamed goddess embodying the ideal, "Is this really such a good idea?"

"I _challenge_ you!" Takane said again.

"I-I-I heard you the first time, Takane-san," Negi said.

"Another one of your conquests?" Karin asked disgustedly.

"Not in the way you are think-"

"It was bad enough that you didn't enter the martial arts competition during the sports festival!" Takane begin to rant. "Bad enough that I suffered a terribly embarrassing defeat there thanks to my distraction!"

"And wearing shadow clothes _again_ ," Mei said, a touch of weariness in her voice.

Takane gave her pupil no notice, her attention entirely focused on Negi. "And then, when I sought you out after the competition, it was bad enough you were nowhere to be found during the entire festival! I even heard disturbing rumors that you'd suffered some manner of terrible wound or been kidnapped!"

Fei and Kaede started rubbing the backs of their heads and whistling innocently.

"But then!" Takane shrieked. "When I just recently attempted to put all that behind me and focus on my stern duties and paid a call upon the representative of your class of hellions, an even more terrible fate befell me!"

"You certainly weren't complaining at the time!" Ayaka snapped as she broke out of the cheerleader routine she'd been doing up until then. No, she was not wearing the Morrigan Aensland costume she'd been wearing the last time she'd done one, it was just a normal cheerleader outfit. To her credit, Mei acknowledged Ayaka's words with an embarrassed nod and neck rub, smiling particularly in Kotaro's general direction. He returned her smile with an uncomfortable wave from the arm Natsumi wasn't holding in an iron grip.

But Takane would not be distracted. "And somehow, _somehow_ , I know that entire situation was your fault! And no, I can not just forget about it and pretend it never happened, since I'm the one who will have to be doing the mindwiping for anybody else who is having problems with the idea! You owe me a rematch, Negi-sensei! Take responsibility for the confusion which will wreck my last days as a high schooler! Take responsibility for my exams which I'm now sure to fail! Take responsibility for my no-longer-marriageable status! By marrying me yourself! I challenge you!"

And that was when Yuna shot her.

"Oneesama!" Mei shrieked, catching Takane's stunned form as it started to crumple.

"You're welcome, Akira!" Yuna called out. "So about that mission, I think I've demonstrated -"

"Yuna!" Negi nearly roared. "Bad form!"

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" she protested. "How can it be bad form to shoot someone who's macking on your best friend's guy? Seriously, I wanna know!"

"I thought I was your best friend!" cried Makie as Akira covered her face in embarrassment.

Placidly ignoring all this nonsense, Konoka quickly headed over to check on Takane. "She's fine, just napping," she announced, more to calm Mei's obvious panic than because she thought any of the other assembled students were all that concerned. "I'll wake her up when you and the others are gone, Negi."

"Or you could kill her in her sleep," Tsukuyomi suggested helpfully. "Then we'd be sure she won't try and follow us."

A horrified silence descended on the gathering, who more or less turned as one to stare at Tsukuyomi.

"My goodness, I could have sworn that I just heard Tsukuyomi's voice," said Konoka, who _hadn't_ turned to look. "But that's impossible, since Tsukuyomi is being dragged back to Kyoto, and if I even suspected that she wasn't, I'd be obligated to inform the Kyoto Magic Association that something had gone horribly wrong!"

"Her method of threatening people is a lot more subtle than yours," Madoka observed off-handedly to Tsukuyomi. "More effective, too."

"Feh."

"And now, we must really be going!" Negi said, getting Konoka's message and demonstrating Madoka's point about it. "Our group is already dangerously large for the mission we undertake, so none of the rest of you can come along. I'm genuinely sorry about that!"

"Oh, I just bet you are," Karin said to him. "Why else would you be in your semi-adult form?"

"Just one more thing," Setsuna called out, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle over to them. She paused in front of Tsukuyomi and handed it to her. "These are the swords you were using at Lake Biwa," she said.

Tsukuyomi blinked, genuinely startled, as she opened the bundle to reveal the truth of Setsuna's words. "How did you -"

"Do not disgrace them again," Setsuna interrupted firmly. She stepped back, gave Negi a final nod, and turned her back on the party. "All right, that's enough, give them some space," she called out to the crowd surrounding them.

It took a bit, but between Setsuna, Asuna and the cheerleaders, they were able to separate Negi's small army from the much larger army surrounding them, opening a clear path towards the cave entrance which supposedly led to the demon gate.

"Do they work like the ones that lead to the Magic World?" Negi asked Karin as they approached the cave.

"I couldn't tell you, as I've never used those. But this one is pretty straightforward, just walk in and out, no blood sacrifices required," Karin replied, for once not prefacing her comments with an insult.

"You've used it before?" Zazie asked quietly.

"I helped to build it."

On that note, they began their descent into Hell.

* * *

"I do not approve," Konoe Eishun said flatly.

"We knew you wouldn't, daddy," his only daughter told him sweetly. "That's why we waited until they were gone to tell you about it. Actually, Setchan didn't think we should tell you at all, but I knew that you'd eventually see reason!"

Eishun looked at Setsuna in a way that had the girl desperately fighting the urge to throw herself to the carpeted floor of the elder's hotel room and offer up her own life in expiation. (It was a difficult battle.) "Did she," he said, also flatly.

After it became apparent that somehow Setsuna was not giving in to her primal urge, Eishun turned back to Konoka. "Konoka, this girl is a menace to society. She has attacked you, attacked Setsuna-kun, threatened your mother's life -"

"Thank you for remembering me, dear," said Kouko from the hotel room's table, where she was going over medical records.

"You're welcome. - so I cannot understand why in the world you would just casually agree to let her out of custody on the promise that she'll assist Negi-kun on this mission of his!"

"Well, daddy, if I recall those stories that Rakan-san told me correctly, when you first met Negi-kun's daddy you were trying to kill _him_ , weren't you?" Konoka asked politely.

Now Eishun gaped. "Are you ... do you mean to tell me that you think that Tsukuyomi is going to become a friend now that she's been thoroughly defeated?"

"Oh, no," Konoka quickly reassured him. "I wouldn't want her as a friend even if I did think that was possible! But I _am_ pointing out that it's not like attempted murder is such a big deal in our family history."

Eishun continued to gape.

"She has a point," said Kouko without looking up from her reports.

After a long sigh, Eishun shook his head. "Very well, I suppose the matter is beyond my control, in any event. And I _am_ glad that you chose to tell me rather than letting me find out on my own, somehow. Particularly since there's something that your mother and I need to ask you about."

"Let the record show that when he says that, he's actually only talking about himself; I don't feel the need to inquire too closely into the situation," Kouko interjected.

"Konoka," Eishun said, trying to talk over Kouko's interjection. "As you are aware, some very ... odd things happened when the World Tree returned to health, and so I would like to ask you, and to receive an honest answer - were you sexually intimate with Setsuna-kun when that happened?"

"Yes," said Konoka cheerfully.

 _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_ , shrieked Setsuna inwardly. All that came out audibly with a strangled cough.

"I told you so," Kouko said, shaking her head.

"I see," Eishun said, shaking _his_ head. "While I of course do not approve of young people such as yourselves engaging in such things, I understand that you were both overpowered by the aphrodisiac scent that the World Tree emitted, and I'm sure that if you were both in your right minds, nothing of that sort would have happened."

"Oh, heck, yes, it totally would!" Konoka disagreed, making Setsuna - impossibly - panic even more. "You see back a while ago when Negi was first aged up -"

* * *

The hotel maid was neither clumsy, nor cute, nor fluent in Japanese. She was, however, good at her job. When she heard the shrieked "WHAT?" coming from that particular hotel room, she didn't react at all.

* * *

" _I'll kill him!_ I'll find him in Hell and I'll kill him there and he'll die in hell! He's not some immortal monster any more, so I can kill him! And I will!" Eishun shrieked as Kouko and Setsuna held him down.

"See? Threats and attempted murder are no big deal in our family!" Konoka asserted. "And you wouldn't _really_ want to kill the father of your first grandchild, would you, daddy?"

"KILLLLL!"

"You seem to be taking this much better than he is," Konoka added to her mother.

"I BID NEGI DUHHHHH!" Eishun added as Kouko finally found his paralysis pressure point and applied the appropriate amount of, well, pressure to it.

Having done so, she let out a long sigh as she released her no-longer necessary hold on her husband. "It only seems that way, dear," Kouko said patiently. "I've gotten fairly good at hiding my outrage over the years. Admittedly, a good part of this particular instance is my complete lack of surprise."

"Ehgh?" asked Setsuna, who was still screaming inwardly and found it difficult to articulate her non-existent thought processes.

Kouko nodded as though that comment had been sensible. "I suspected that something of that nature was bound to happen when my father stepped in to insist that Negi-kun should continue living in the dorms even after he was aged into adolescence. I had every reason to suspect that he would be happy if the boy dragged you into sin. And Asuna-san as well, given the pity he felt for her plight. And perhaps even Setsuna-kun, since he is certainly old-fashioned enough to buy all that 'wife and mistress' macho nonsense."

"Negi did mention that you gave grandpa a certain look when he told us about the situation," Konoka agreed, deliberately avoiding a specific repetition of Negi's exact words on the subject. Her tone grew slightly chilly as she continued. "He neglected to mention whether you'd voiced any objections or opinions to the contrary, however."

"There was no omission, for there were no objections made. After all, I have no opinions. Because all that I am is the wife of the Elder and the daughter of another Elder, so what do I know?" Kouko asked bitterly. "Because I do nothing but stay back as the men make all the decisions, because that's what's expected of me, because I hold no power of my own, and even if I wanted to -"

"Mother!" Konoka interjected, genuinely startled. "You're being far too hard on yours-"

"Now you call me that?" Kouko interrupted right back at her. " _Now_? I've barely spent any time with you. I always left your care as someone else's problem. I'm a horrible mother, and this is the proof. When you needed me the most, I did nothing ... just as you expected me to do nothing, now!"

"That's not true!" Konoka cried. "I had a plan for what we were going to do if you did react like daddy!"

"Oh, really?" Kouko asked, wearily skeptical. "And what was that plan?"

"Well, I was going to tell Setchan to jump your bones, and while daddy was startled by that, I'd take advantage of the distraction to pull down his pants and start -" Konoka started to explain.

"Never mind," Kouko said quickly.

"It's just that, after I did it with Yuna-chan and _her_ daddy, I've been curious about -"

"Yes, Konoka, _I get the idea!_ A chair, please, I'm not feeling too well."

Konoka looked at the bleached out figures of Setsuna and her father, drawn as though by a somewhat disturbing artist, and decided that instruction was clearly intended for her.

* * *

"Ayaka," said Chizuru, very calmly.

"Yes, Chizuru-san?" Ayaka replied, just as calmly.

"Considering that Natsumi-chan is gone on a trip to Venus - and I wonder how my life became such that I can make statements like that - I was hoping that maybe you'd consider letting me out of these bonds." She moved to the extent that she was able to, causing the metal buckles on her bondage outfit to jingle a bit. Of course, her hands and feet were both shackled to the rather heavy chair in which she was presently seated.

"I couldn't possibly do that, Chizuru-san," Ayaka told her, pausing as she stirred her cup of tea. "After all, you submitted to Natsumi, not to me, and so it would be unspeakably rude for me to release you from your bonds any more than Natsumi said that I could. Why, the whole fabric of our happy dormitory life would be utterly overthrown if I were to do that. No, it just won't do. I'm terribly sorry. But isn't it nice that she agreed to remove the gag from your mouth?"

"Thrillsville '03," Chizuru muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said, yes, she's so very good to aaahhhh, can't keep it up. Ayaka, you're enjoying this far too much."

"Oh?" said Ayaka, bringing the teaspoon up to her chin as she looked at Chizuru with apparently unfeigned confusion. "I'm not sure what you could possibly mean by that. If anything, I would think that you would be the one enjoying having me waiting on you, hand and foot, to take care of your every need. Is this not so?"

"... it is ... so," Chizuru said, very reluctantly.

"Well, good then. As to whether I am enjoying this ..." Ayaka paused, and the smile on her face grew a little more genuine. "Seeing you like this, the side of you that isn't so prim and perfect, the side that isn't cheerful all the time, the side with actual feet of clay like the rest of us ... it makes me like you better," she confided shyly.

Chizuru felt herself blushing. And then she realized that she wasn't actually embarrassed or unsettled by Ayaka's statement. "Um ... I need to go to the bathroom."

"Yes, that's another good example - the side of you who needs to go to the bathroom just like anyb-"

"No, I mean, right now."

"Oh, well, let's get on with that," Ayaka said cheerfully.

* * *

Negi wasn't sure what he'd expected Hell to be like. Well, that was only half-true; he had a specific image when he thought of 'hell', but he hadn't expected to perceive a chilly early winter's evening with the faint scent of ashes in the air and the stomach-dropping certainty that everything was entirely his fault when he arrived there. From being told that it wasn't a cavern in the center of Earth, he'd somewhat dismissed the ideas of darkness lit only by distant flames and the screams of the tormented. A bright green jungle, complete with what he hoped were bird cries, had been nowhere in his expectations.

And yet here they were, gazing around at just that.

"This is going to be murder on my makeup, isn't it?" Misa asked quietly, the first of them to speak after emerging from the tunnel's Demon World side.

"Probably," Karin said absently, looking about carefully. "I was right, though. Everything looks much the same as the last time I was here."

"The borders of the various territories have likely shifted a little from the way that they were back then," Zazie warned her softly.

Karin was already shaking her head. "Shouldn't matter, we won't be going anywhere near any of the official crossings." She frowned. "That said ..." After trailing off, she spoke more loudly. "All right, Rainyday and I are going to go scout our immediate area. The rest of you should remain here. _Don't touch anything._ " This last was directed in Misa's direction.

"Perhaps I should come as -" Chachamaru started to offer.

"There may come a day when I'd trust you with my back, android, but this is not that day," Karin interrupted without looking at her. "Besides, you're noi-"

"Gynoid," Chachamaru pronounced firmly.

"Excuse me?"

"The proper term for entities of my construction is 'gynoid'."

Now Karin did turn to look back at Chachamaru, regarding her with fairly obvious disbelief. When the gynoid showed no sign of backing down on her words, all that the immortal warrior did was make a noise somewhat reminiscent of one of Evangeline's suppressed laughs, before turning away once again and heading off into the jungle, with Zazie pausing only to bow politely in Chachamaru's direction before following her.

"I don't understand," said Akira after a moment. "If the last time she saw Evangeline was shortly after Evangeline started attending Mahora, then how does she know you, Chachamaru?"

"She visited the area again shortly after I went online," Chachamaru explained. "Master avoided her at that time, and she and I had a confrontation. Please do not trouble yourself about it, Akira-san, I am not greatly bothered by her gibes."

"Aren't you?" Akira asked quietly ... sounding not exactly skeptical, but not credulous, either.

Chachamaru resumed her scan of their surroundings. "Say rather that I understand that they come from a place of helpless envy, and refuse to allow them to bother me."

Uncomfortable with all of this, Misa retreated to a place of comfortable annoyance. "'Don't touch anything', she says. I guess I must not have realized that her feet don't touch the ground like the rest of us."

"Oh, relax, Misa, it's not that big a deal," Madoka said wearily, looking around. "For something so scary as to be called Hell, though, it is kind of pretty. Hey, is this a flower or some kind of fungiiiiiiiiii!" she concluded as the growth she was pointing a finger at grew teeth-like thorns and attempted to eat said finger.

Naturally, Madoka strove to avoid this, and jerked back. Unfortunately, that led her to bump the back of one foot into small clump of the grass that grew everywhere in the clearing, sending her sprawling backwards onto a larger clump ... with an odd, squishy noise ensuing.

Madoka's face went white. "Ahuh?" she said.

"Get her up, get her up!" Negi called out, sounding oddly panicked.

Misa and Akira quickly moved to follow his suggestion, which proved more difficult than it should be - the reasons for which became horrifically clear as Madoka was pulled back up into a standing position and it could be seen that they had pulled a stalk of the grass - with its roots twisting like a drowning octopus - up with her as it stuck into her exposed hip.

"Whawhawhawha?" asked Madoka, eyes dazed.

"Nodoka," Negi said.

"On it," the librarian turned treasure hunter said shortly as she pulled a tiny vial out of her utility belt, uncorking it and holding it up to Madoka's nose. "Deep breaths, don't hold it at all, just think of this as a pulled muscle during practice," Nodoka told the cheerleader as calmly as she could manage.

"I don't, I don't - uhhh, okay," Madoka replied as the potion's scent began to do its work.

"Sensei, I think I should handle the next step," Chachamaru said, eyes fixed on the grass stalk penetrating Madoka's flank.

Negi, who was pulling on a glove, paused at that statement, then nodded once. "Do it."

Without further encouragement, Chachamaru reached down and wrapped her head around the grass' root structure, which proceeded to wrap around her hand and making sucking noises. "I apologize, Madoka-san," she said, and pulled forcefully.

"UHHHHHHHHH!" Madoka gasped as the bloody grass frond, grown to several times its original size, came out of her. Almost as soon as it did, Negi was sliding a dressing onto the exposed wound and whispering spells of purification and cleansing.

"Don't touch anything," he repeated, once he was able to speak again.

"Got it," said Misa, eyes tiny black dots. "Best advice I ever received. Hey, on a different topic, would it be too late to rethink this whole expedition?"

"Very much so," Negi told her wearily. "This side of the gate, leading back to Earth, won't reopen for several days now that a party this size has passed through. That's the reason I didn't bring _everybody_ \- if I had, we might have had to spend a full month here instead several days."

"... this is hell," Misa said faintly.

"Yes, Misa. It is."

It abruptly occurred to Negi that Tsukuyomi had remained utterly silent throughout this affray, and he turned to check on her ... only to find her standing exactly where she had been when Zazie and Karin had disappeared into the forest. While initially relieved that she hadn't taken advantage of their distraction to make an escape attempt, he found himself puzzled by the odd expression on her face. She seemed neither amused nor aroused, the two expressions he'd grown used to seeing there, but the way she looked at this moment was also far from her usual, bored expression.

And she was looking at Madoka.

"Tsukuyomi-san?" he inquired.

She blinked, face quickly adjusting back to an expression of weary indifference. "Don't touch anything. Right. Object lesson received. Now what?"

"Are you -"

"For pity's sake," Karin said disgustedly as she strode out of the woods. "I left you alone for a few minutes, and what do I find when I get back?"

"I didden touch anything," Madoka said a bit confusedly as Misa helped her remain standing. "I jus' ... _sat_ on something, I guess."

"Razor grass," Zazie explained as she followed Karin back into sight. "It's fairly common in this region."

Karin shook her head in exasperation. "There's a border crossing checkpoint a short distance from here. Miraculously, you didn't draw their attention with all that racket. We can go around it with some difficulty and get close to one of the castles where this one thinks her sister might be held, so we had best get going now."

"Alternatively, we could make camp here so that Madoka can recover from her injury," Negi replied quietly.

"Here?" asked Misa, unsettled. "With all this razor grass stuff around us?"

In reply, Zazie headed over to the grassy area where Madoka had landed, and ran her hand over the stalks of grass. They gave way easily and didn't cause her any injury.

"But -"

"Loud noises nearby cause them to become rigid and resilient," Zazie explained. "Avoid that, and they're perfectly safe."

"Loud noi-" Misa started to protest, then subsided. "Okay. Yeah. I see how it worked, now."

Karin and Negi had been locked in a staredown all this while, and just as Misa calmed down, so too did Karin turn aside and roll her eyes. "Camping. Right. Let's do that. Perhaps we should sing songs around a campfire."

"Open flame also has the same effect on razor grass."

"Apparently sarcasm does not."

* * *

So they camped.

They'd brought no tents, so it was more a case of pulling sleeping bags out of their baggage and using them to wrap up those, like Madoka, who needed a rest. The sun hadn't set yet - and, from what Zazie told them, technically wouldn't set at all for the equivalent of days on Earth, though a magical interference screen in the sky would reduce its light and heat output to that of a moon over the course of a "day" cycle - so nobody was going to sleep just yet, but taking a rest like this would be a good way to adapt to the changed environment.

And they established a perimeter around the camp and had partners go out to walk it and perform guard duty.

"Apparently, this is my life now," Tsukuyomi muttered disgustedly as she did so.

"Apparently so," Nodoka agreed as she followed along behind her.

Perhaps the younger girl hadn't meant for that plaint to be audible, for all that she said as a follow-up was an incomprehensible grumble.

"Look on the bright side ... we could get attacked by something, and you'd be right on the front lines," Nodoka said, genuinely trying to cheer her up.

"Attacked by monsters. I won't improve fighting monsters. They fight by instinct, not by training," the swordswoman sniped back at her without turning to look back at her.

"Well, I guess you'd know," Nodoka answered calmly. "Incidentally, about when you froze up during that episode -"

 _Now_ Tsukuyomi turned, quite rapidly in fact, and looked as though she was about to yell. But, perhaps remembering all the razor grass around, she visibly calmed herself, and spoke in a level tone. "I didn't freeze up. And how do you know about that, anyway?" There was a fair amount of edge in the latter sentence.

"Negi told me. He also asked me to find out what had happened."

"Of course he did," she grumbled. "I'm surprised you haven't just read my mind."

"I don't have any real compunctions about doing so," Nodoka said, just as sharply as Tsukuyomi had been speaking a moment before. "But I thought that I might try conversation first. You know, to give you the chance to demonstrate that I don't need to take the direct approach."

Tsukuyomi turned away.

"I don't think it's terribly likely that you can't stand the sight of blood, somehow," Nodoka continued.

"Why can you?" the other girl finally snapped.

"Excuse me?" Nodoka asked, startled.

"You're a bunch of cossetted students from one of the most civilized countries in the Old World," Tsukuyomi half-ranted - the half that was missing being volume, because she kept it low to avoid provoking any nearby razor grass. "Why didn't any of you panic when that happened? The closest to it was that purple-haired slut, or maybe the one who clings to the dog hanyou, and even they didn't really ..." Now she trailed off, concluding after a moment with a short cry of, "Why?"

The librarian stared at her for a few seconds before replying. "You're from that same country, the last time I checked."

"That's not the point! I'm -"

"Tsukuyomi-san," Nodoka interjected. "I've never felt quite so sorry for someone as I do for you right now."

Now the swordswoman stared at her. "Excuse me?" she asked hoarsely.

"You just don't seem to be able to learn from experiences, and that's a very sad thing for anybody, but especially for a martial artist, I'd imagine. I really don't know what it's going to take to get it through your head that we're not these innocents abroad that you think. I spent months traveling with a group of ruin explorers. Do you really think that nobody suffered any injuries in that time? I've had plenty of chances to get used to seeing people get hurt and helping out with first aid."

"Well, good for you, but what about -" Tsukuyomi started to demand.

"Akira-san is a trained athlete. Injuries are part of her life, too. For that matter, they're part of Misa-san's life as a cheerleader. And Natsumi-san ... okay, Natsumi-san is just a good actress, and she was probably more upset by the sight of that than she was letting on, so kudos to you for picking up on the truth, even partially. Now if you'll just start applying that perceptiveness to the rest of this situation, maybe we'll be able to get somewhere."

Tsukuyomi felt her teeth grinding together, and the urge to lash out, to draw forth her blades and demonstrate how she could perceive the vast openings in the other girl's defenses and investigate how the girl dealt with really _serious_ injuries to herself, was almost overpowering. If she'd been on any world other than this one, she'd have probably submitted to it.

And yet ... the other girl just stood there, gazing at her patiently. She had to be aware of how much danger she was in, but there she was, seemingly defenseless ...

... just like her sempai's princess had seemed.

Tsukuyomi let out a long, disgusted breath. "I don't get it," she said again. "And now you're saying that I'm never going to get it."

"I didn't say that," Nodoka countered. "I said that you're showing that you just don't seem to learn. But maybe, if you stop underestimating us so much, you'll start realizing that there are lessons you can learn from us." The girl smiled then. "Trust me, if I didn't think you were ever going to get it, I wouldn't bother talking to you except to hint at the existence of very good coffee available on campus."

"... what?"

"Never mind. Come on, we've got the rest of the perimeter to check."

"How do you know, anyway?" Tsukuyomi asked as Nodoka turned to do just that.

"... how do I know what?" asked Nodoka after a moment of regret that they were not getting back on the job immediately.

"That I ..." The younger girl hesitated again, then lowered her gaze so that she didn't meet Nodoka's eyes before continuing. "... that I want to learn from you people. Did you already read my mind?"

"No, Setsuna told me about her conversation with you. Don't look so shocked, I'm friends with Konoka, remember? That's how bonds work. It's like the old story about what's harder to break, a set of sticks standing alone or those sticks bundled together."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, and if the sword is sharp enough, it should be able to go through either fairly easily," Tsukuyomi said blandly.

Nodoka stared at her for a moment, sighed and shook her head, then turned to start walking the perimeter without waiting for Tsukuyomi to catch up.

"So you're friends with the princess, and that makes you friends with my ... with her," Tsukuyomi said as she followed.

"Friends with benefits, yes," Nodoka agreed. There came a crashing noise behind her. "Are you all right?" she asked, holding back from turning around with some difficulty.

"Oh, just peachy," Tsukuyomi replied as she unsteadily rose to her feet again, having somehow avoided the razor grass which the sound of her fall would surely have sharpened. "Thanks so much for reminding me about the other side of this whole situation. Bleh."

"Well, if you're that uncomfortable with the subject, I'll try to avoid it in the future. But you might want to ask Negi to put up a sound barrier when we stop for the evening so you're not ... further disconcerted."

"... with him, too?" the swordswoman gasped.

"Yes. All of us. Except Kotaro, much to Haruna's dismay." She reflected a moment, hemming. "Maybe to Kotaro's dismay, too, a little," she added softly.

"And you're going to be doing that ... stuff ... here? _In Hell?_ "

"I look at it as a way of signalling the triumph of life over ... whatever all this is," Nodoka replied, looking around.

"Nguh," Tsukuyomi said with a shudder.

Something occurred to Nodoka, then, and she paused to slowly turn around to look at Tsukuyomi. "Tsukuyomi-san ... are you really disgusted by that idea? Did someone ... do something to you, at some point, and that's left you with -"

The other girl had been staring at her in befuddlement as she spoke, but that confusion faded into obvious outrage. "Are you ... are you seriously suggesting that I -" And then, quite suddenly, Tsukuyomi laughed. "Oh," she said. " _Oh._ You'd like that, wouldn't you? Some sort of convenient explanation for why I am the way that I am, some villain in my past that you could blame for me. A way to tell yourself that I was always supposed to be something like you, but somehow things went wrong."

Just as suddenly, Tsukuyomi was up in Nodoka's face, eyes gone manic. "Dream on, little mind-reader. _Dream on._ "

With that, she stepped to Nodoka's side and began walking the perimeter ahead of her 'partner'.

After a moment to settle her heart rate, Nodoka turned to follow her.

* * *

The sky was darkening and the sun had, as Zazie had predicted, dimmed to the brightness of the moon. "It's always dimmer than it actually would be if the illusionary sky didn't interpose," she said as she stood with Negi and watched the solar disc grow cold and dark enough to look directly at it. "We are much closer to the dayspring than Earth, after all."

Negi glanced at her when she used the word dayspring. The unfamiliar phrase reminded him once again just how much she had been keeping undercover for the first two and a half years of her time on Earth. No comment that he could make seemed appropriate, so he stood and watched in silent wonder at a magic deeper, mightier and yet more subtle than anything he could wield.

Then the silence was broken. "All right," said Karin, standing behind the pair of them. "The girl has rested long enough. Let's get moving so we can take advantage of the window of time before the night-beasts start to prowl."

"I think we should let _Madoka_ decide whether she's rested enough," Negi answered. "I'll go ask her."

"'Ask her'," Karin repeated. "And that is the ultimate example of why bringing a bunch of schoolgirls on this expedition was a terrible idea."

Negi found himself taking a deep breath. "I am sure that if one of the trained warriors you suggested as a more sensible alternative had suffered a similar injury, I would be just as solicitous of their health as I am that of Madoka and the others. Nor do I think that simply ordering people to be ready to move is a particularly sound command decision, regardless of whom one is ordering. And -" He stopped himself before he could go any further, before the words which could not be taken back were said. "- and now I'm going to go ask her."

He turned and walked over to the sleeping bag where Madoka was lying down with Misa and Akira both at her side. "How are you feeling, Madoka?" he asked.

"Well, my hip still stings, but I'm not dizzy from the treatment any more," the cheerleader replied calmly, sitting up a bit with a wince on her face. "I guess I'm ready to get moving again."

"You guess?" Negi asked gently.

Madoka met his eyes, and then faltered a bit. "I know that I don't want to be the weakest link on this mission."

The anger that he'd controlled when talking to Karin came back in full force, and it took another moment to get it managed. "Please don't think of yourself that way. If you're really ready, then if you could help Misa get packed up again, we'll be leaving shortly. Akira, could I have a word, please?"

"Oh, yes, of course," she said, standing up quickly and walking with him as he led her to the far side of the camp from where Zazie and Karin were standing, and a little bit into the bush. Their path crossed that of Kotaro and Natsumi as they came in from their turn on perimeter guard.

"Dude, already?" Kotaro asked.

"NOT NOW, KOTARO-KUN."

"Negi, are you all right?" Akira asked, wide-eyed, as Negi finally came to a halt and turned back to look at her.

"Just a moment, please," he said, breathing heavily, his hands clenched in fists. "Just a -" And then, without the popping noise that Akira found herself half-expecting, he turned back into his pre-adolescent self. "Ahhhhhh," he sighed, as though a great burden had abruptly been lifted.

"Oh," she said, somewhat enlightened. "You were really _that_ angry?"

"I'm still angry, but I'm not as inclined to express that anger physically, when I'm like this," he said, sounding more weary than outraged. "Also, I'm in a somewhat better position to realize that doing so would have gotten me nowhere."

"Fighting Yuuki-san doesn't seem like a very good idea to me either," Akira agreed.

"No, but ... I swear, Akira, if that's what being an undying immortal does to someone, leaving them with no sympathy for human weakness, then I count myself as having had a narrow escape. And the worst part is that Madoka was agreeing with her, that she was some sort of weak link, and -" He ran out of words, shook his head and just growled like Kotaro. Or maybe that was more like a groan.

She looked at him in silence for a few moments, before she finally spoke up again. "Negi ... are you sure that it was a narrow escape?"

He looked back, confused. "I'm sorry, what?"

Akira took a deep breath. "I'm trying to be fair to everybody, here. But I don't think Madoka isn't _just_ being influenced by Yuuki-san's bad attitude, she's also genuinely embarrassed and upset at having been injured so easily and so early. You're overstating the amount of influence that Yuuki-san has ... and I'm afraid that I'm wondering whether you're doing that because you somehow envy Yuuki-san."

Negi's jaw dropped. "Envy - what?"

"If you were somehow still an undying immortal, and had to do this mission, you could do it with Zazie and maybe Yuuki-san's help, and none of the rest of us would be at risk. I think that must be a tempting scenario to you. Isn't it?" she asked, looking at him evenly, voice calm and steady.

He looked back ... and yet he was the one who looked away first. "I can't really envision that scenario, because I can't envision a scenario where I still had Magia Erebea and all this was happening. But ... any scenario where my dearest ones are in less danger is a tempting one, yes," he admitted.

"Thank you," Akira said softly.

"For what?"

"For not getting angry when I asked you that."

"You're my partner," Negi replied simply, finally meeting her gaze again. "I need you to tell me the truth as you see it. Even when the truth isn't happy or pleasant."

"It's not going to be easy, ever, is it?" she asked.

"Probably not."

Akira reached into her backpack and pulled out the jar of age-up pills that she was carrying, holding them out to him. As he reached for her, she bent down and kissed him soundly.

"I love you," she said, as she pulled back. "Even when the truth isn't happy and pleasant."

"I love you," he answered. Then frowned. "Did you hear something?"

Immediately, the two of them went very quiet, listening for any potential hint of danger, their only movement being Negi's very slow reach for the wand strapped across his back. His hand rested on it for a full minute while he listened.

"Nothing?" Akira asked quietly.

"No. I must have been hearing things," he answered quietly. "Am I getting paranoid, in addition to everything else?"

"We're in Hell. Paranoia is probably a good idea," she said.

Negi made a face. "Until it gets us in worse trouble." He let go of the staff, took the age up pill and sighed as he popped into near-adulthood once again. "All right, let's go before Kotaro convinces everybody that we really are heading off into the woods for some private time."

"I don't think he'd really do that, given that he and Natsumi were clearly coming back from just that sort of thing," she told him, smiling gently.

His eyes went wide. "They were? But -"

Akira actually giggled. He was still so innocent.

* * *

"All right," said Negi, a few moments later, once he'd assured himself that the rest of the group were ready to go. "Which way, Yuuki-san?"

Karin regarded him skeptically, and for a moment he thought she was going to make yet another sarcastic observation. But the moment passed, and she pointed off in a direction which was, he thought, slightly different from the bearing she and Zazie had taken earlier. "Rainyday, if you could bring up the rear?" she asked.

As Zazie nodded, Negi found himself pondering Karin's change in attitude ... and then a notion occurred to him. Had she followed him when he'd stormed away with Akira in tow, listened to what he'd said, and decided to make a change? That could explain the noise that he'd heard. If he was right, it was a hopeful sign, and they could use as many of those as possible, given the circumstances.

Relieved, he didn't notice the way that Tsukuyomi, further back in the line of marchers, was keeping a steady eye on his back.

 _'somehow still an undying immortal'_ she thought. _'still had Magia Erebea'_ she thought. _Which means that he isn't and doesn't._

 _Verrrrry interesting._

 **To Be Continued**

 **Author's Note**

So you may have noticed that there was quite a bit of time between the last update and this one. And no, it was not just a case of the holiday blues that kept this one back. Shortly after I began writing this chapter, back in November, OverMaster found his well of inspiration for the Side Conquests storyline running dry, while he resumed work on the main _Unequally Rational & Emotional_ continuity. As I was taking quite a few cues for the direction of my story from his, I found myself unable to continue, except sporadically ... until very recently. I'm still having troubles but I'm committed to getting this story finished. Hopefully these problems won't delay the next chapter quite so long.

As always, I look forward to your commentary and criticism, constant readers.


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